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BY 

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NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1897 


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BY 

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GEORGE MEREDITH 
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REVISED EDITION 





NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1897 




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COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
GEORGE MEREDITH 


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John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A 


C 0 N T E N T S 


■■■■■ ♦ 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE 1 

II. THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE . 9 

III. OLD VEUVE 14 

IV. THE SECOND BOTTLE 21 

V. THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD 31 

VI. NATALY 40 

c 

VII. BETWEEN A GENERAL MAN OF THE WORLD AND A 

PROFESSIONAL 49 

VIII. SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS 60 

IX. AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 68 

X. SKEPSEY IN MOTION .• 80 

XI. WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF 

LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE ... 92 

XII. TREATS OF THE DUMBNESS POSSIBLE WITH MEMBERS 


OF A HOUSEHOLD HAVING ONE HEART . . . 103 

XIII. THE LATEST OF :MRS. BURMAN .109 

XIV. DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS . . 119 

XV. A PATRIOT ABROAD 132 

XVI. ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY’S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING 

HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY ........ 140 

XVII. CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID’s 

IMAGININGS 149 


VI 


CONTEXTS 


CHAP. 


XVIII. 

XIX. 


XX. 
XXI. 
XXII. 
• XXIII. 


XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 


XXVII. 


XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 


XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA . . 

TREATS OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE 
DISSENSION BETWEEN THEM AND OF A SAT- 
IRIST’S MALIGNITY IN THE DIRECTION OF HIS 

COUNTRY 

THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS .... 

DARTREY FENELLAN 

CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN . . . 

TREATS OF THE LADIES’ LAPDOG TASSO FOR AN 
INSTANCE OF MOMENTOUS EFFECTS PRODUCED 
BY VERY MINOR CAUSES 

nesta’s engagement 

NATALY IN ACTION . 

IN WHICH WE SEE A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN 
ENDEAVOURING TO EXAMINE A SPECTRE OF 

HIMSELF 

CONTAINS WHAT IS A SMALL THING OR A GREAT, 
AS THE SOUL OF THE CHIEF ACTOR MAY 

DECIDE 

MRS. MARSETT 

SHOWS ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WORLD 

CROSSING A virgin’s MIND 

THE BURDEN UPON NESTA 

SHOWS HOW THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S 
SERVICE HAVE AT TIMES TO DO KNIGHTLY 

CONQUEST OF THEMSELVES 

SHOWS HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER AND 
AN INDIGNANT WOMAN GET HER WEAPON . . 

A PAIR OF WOOERS 

CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS 
OF FEELINGS 


PAGE 

159 


171 

188 

200 

217 


226 

239 

253 


263 


269 

277 

289 

296 


307 

320 

327 

338 


CONTEXTS Vii 

■v 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXXV. IX WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD 

LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL DARKNESS 348 

XXXVI. NESTA AND HER FATHER 355 


XXXVII. THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER ...... 367 

XXXVIII. NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN . . 377 

XXXIX. A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT . 388 

XL. AN EXPIATION 402 

XLI. THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 412 

425 


XLII 


THE LAST 



t . t 


V 







ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


CHAPTER I 

ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE 

A GENTLEMAN, iiotewortliy for a lively countenance and a 
waistcoat to match it, crossing London Bridge at noon on 
a gusty April day, was almost magically detached from 
his conflict with the gale by some sly strip of slipperiness, 
abounding in that conduit of the markets, which had more 
or less adroitly performed the trick upon preceding passen- 
gers, and now laid this one flat amid the shufile of feet, 
peaceful for the moment as the uncomplaining who have 
gone to Sabrina beneath the tides. He was unhurt, quite 
sound, merely astonished, he remarked, in reply to the in- 
quiries of the first kind helper at his elbow ; and it appeared 
an acceptable statement of his condition. He laughed, 
shook his coat-tails, smoothed the back of his head rather 
thoughtfully, thankfully received his runaway hat, nodded 
bright beams to right and left, and making light of the 
muddy stigmas imprinted by the pavement, he scattered 
another shower of his nods and smiles around, to signify 
that, as his good friends would wish, he thoroughly felt his 
legs and could walk unaided. And he was in the act of 
doing it, questioning his familiar behind the waistcoat 
amazedly, to tell him how such a misadventure could have 
occurred to him of all men, when a glance below his chin 
discomposed his outward face. “Oh, confound the fel- 
low! ” he said, with simple frankness, and was humour- 
ously ruffled, having seen absurd blots of smutty knuckles 
distributed over the maiden waistcoat. 

1 


2 


ONE OF OUB CONQUEBOBS 


His outcry was no more than the confidential communi- 
cation of a genial spirit with that distinctive article of 
his attire. At the same time, for these friendly people 
about him to share the fun of the annoyance, he looked 
hastily brightly back, seeming with the contraction of his 
brows to frown, on the little band of observant Samari- 
tans; in the centre of whom a man who knew himself 
honourably unclean, perhaps consequently a bit of a polit- 
ical jewel, hearing one of their number confounded for 
his pains, and by the wearer of a superfine dashing-white 
waistcoat, was moved to take notice of the total deficiency 
of gratitude in this kind of gentleman’s look and pocket. 
If we ask for nothing for helping gentlemen to stand up- 
right on their legs, and get it, we expect civility into the 
bargain. Moreover, there are reasons in nature why we 
choose to give sign of a particular surliness when our 
w^ealthy superiors would have us think their condescend- 
ing grins are cordials. 

The gentleman’s eyes were followed on a second hurried 
downward grimace, the necessitated wrinkles of which 
could be stretched by malevolence to a semblance of 
haughty disgust; reminding us, through our readings in 
journals, of the wicked overblown Prince Eegent and his 
Court, together with the view taken of honest labour in 
the mind of supercilious luxury, even if indebted to it 
freshly for a trifle; and the hoar-headed nineteenth-cen- 
tury billow of democratic ire craved the word to be set 
swelling. 

“Am I the fellow you mean, sir?” the man said. 

He was answered, not ungraciously: “All right, my 
man.” 

But the balance of our public equanimity is prone to 
violent antic bobbings on occasions when, for example, an 
ostentatious garment shall appear disdainful of our class 
and ourself, and coin of the realm has not usurped com- 
mand of one of the scales : thus a fairly pleasant answer, 
cast in persuasive features, provoked the retort — 

“There you ’re wrong; nor would n’t be.” 

“What ’s that? ” was the gentleman’s musical iiiquir}^ 

“That ’s flat, as you was half a minute ago,” the man 
rejoined. 


ACROSS LONDOiT BRIDGE 


3 


Ah, well, don^t be impudent,’’ the gentleman said, by 
way of amiable remonstrance before a parting. 

And none of your'dam punctilio,” said the man. 

Their exchange rattled smartly, without a direct hos- 
tility, and the gentleman stepped forward. 

It was observed in the crowd, that after a few paces he 
put two fingers on the back of his head. 

They might suppose him to be condoling with his recent 
mishap. But, in fact, a thing had occurred to vex him 
more than a descent upon the pavement or damage to his 
waistcoat’s whiteness: he abominated the thought of an 
altercation with a member of the mob; he found that enor- 
mous beast comprehensible only when it applauded him ; 
and besides he wished it warmly well; all that was good 
for it; plentiful dinners, country excursions , stout menage- 
rie bars, music, a dance, and to bed: he was for patting, 
stroking, petting the mob, for tossing it sops, never for 
irritating it to show an eye-tooth, much less for causing 
it to exhibit the grinders : and in endeavouring to get at 
the grounds of his dissension with that dirty-fisted fellow, 
the recollection of the word punctilio shot a throb of pain 
to the spot where his mishap had rendered him suscep- 
tible. Headache threatened — and to him of all men ! 
But was there ever such a word for drumming on a 
cranium ? Puzzles are presented to us now and then in 
the course of our days; and the smaller they are the 
better for the purpose, it would seem ; and they come in 
rattle-boxes, they are actually children’s toys, for what they 
contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understand- 
ings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, 
to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Or 
does this happen to us only after a fall ? 

He tried a suspension of his mental efforts, and the 
word was like the clapper of a disorderly bell, striking 
through him, with reverberations, in the form of interro- 
gations, as to how he, of all men living, could by any 
chance have got into a wrangle, in a thoroughfare, on 
London Bridge, of all places in the world ! — he, so popu- 
lar, renowned for his affability, his amiability; having no 
dislike to common dirty dogs, entirely the reverse, liking 
them and doing his best for them; and accustomed to 


4 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


receive their applause. And in what way had he offered 
a hint to bring on him the charge of punctilio ? 

‘^But I am treating it seriously!’’ he said, and jerked a 
dead laugh while fixing a button of his coat. 

That he should have treated it seriously, furnished next 
the subject of cogitation; and here it was plainl}^ sug- 
gested, that a degradation of his physical system, owing 
to the shock of the fall, must be seen and acknowledged ; 
for it had become a perverted engine, to pull him down 
among the puerilities, and very soon he was worrying at 
punctilio anew, attempting to read the riddle of the appli- 
cation of it to himself, angry that he had allowed it to be 
the final word, and admitting it a famous word for the 
closing of a controversy : — it banged the door and rolled 
drum-notes; it deafened reason. And was it a London 
cockney crow -word of the day, or a word that had stuck 
in the fellow’s head from the perusal of his pothouse news- 
paper columns ? 

Furthermore, the plea of a fall, and the plea of a shock 
from a fall, required to account for the triviality of the 
mind, were humiliating to him who had never hitherto 
missed a step, or owned to the shortest of collapses. This 
confession of deficiency in explosive repartee — using a 
friend^s term for the ready gift — was an old and a rueful 
one with Victor Radnor. His godmother Fortune denied 
him that. She bestowed it on his friend Fenellau, and 
little else. Simeon Fenellan could clap the halter on a 
coltish mob; he had positively caught the roar of cries and 
stilled it, by capping the cries in turn, until the peoj^le 
cheered him; and the effect of the scene upon Victor 
Radnor disposed him to rank the gift of repartee higher 
than a certain rosily oratorical that he was permitted to 
tell himself he possessed, in bottle if not on draught. 
Let it only be explosive repartee: the well-fused bomb, 
the bubble to the stone, echo round the horn. Fenellan 
would have discharged an extinguisher on jpunctiUo in 
emission. Victor Radnor was unable to cope with it 
reflectively. 

IS’o, but one doesn’t like being beaten by anything! he 
replied to an admonishment of his better mind, as he 
touched his two fingers, more significantly dubious than 


ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE 


5 


I 

' the whole hand, at the back of his head, and checked or 
stemmed the current of a fear. For he was utterly unlike 
himself; he was dwelling on a trifle, on a matter discern- 
ibly the smallest, an incident of the streets ; and although 
he refused to feel a bump or any responsive notification of 
a bruise, he made a sacrifice of his native pride to his 
intellectual, in granting that he must have been shaken, 

: so childishly did he continue thinking. 

: Yes, well, and if a tumble distorts our ideas of life, and 

an odd word engrosses our speculations, we are poor crea- 
tures, he addressed another friend, from whom he stood 
constitutionally in dissent, naming himColney; and under 
pressure of the name, reviving old wrangles between them 
upon man^s present achievements and his probable des- 
tinies: especially upon England’s grandeur, vitality, 
stability, her intelligent appreciation of her place in the 
universe; not to speak of the historic dignity of London 
City. Colney had to be overcome afresh, and. he fled, 
but managed, with two or three of his bitter phrases, to 
make a cuttle-fish fight of it, that oppressively shadowed 
his vanquisher : — 

The Daniel Lambert of Cities : the Female Annnitant of 
Nations : — and such like, wretched stuff, proper to Colney 
Durance, easily dispersed and out-laughed when we have 
our vigour. We have as much as we need of it in sum- 
moning a contemptuous Pooh to our lips, with a shrug at 
venomous dyspepsia. 

Nevertheless, a malignant sketch of Colney ’s, in the 
which Hengist and Horsa, our fishy Saxon originals, in 
modern garb of liveryman and gaitered squire, flat-headed, 
paunchy, assiduously servile, are shown blacking Ben- 
IsraePs boots and grooming the princely stud of the Jew, 
had come so near to Victor Eadnor’s apprehensions of a 
possible, if not an impending, consummatioD, that the 
ghastly vision of the Jew Dominant in London City, over 
England, over Europe, America, the world (a picture 
drawn in literary sepia by Colney: with our poor hang- 
neck population uncertain about making a bell-rope of the 
forelock to the Satyr-snouty master; and th^ Norman Lord 
de Warenne handing him for a lump sum son and daughter, 
both to be Hebraized in their different ways), fastened on 


6 


ONE OF OUE CONQUERORS 


the most mercurial of patriotic men, and gave him a whole- 
length plunge into despondency. 

It lasted nearly a minute. His recovery was not in this 
instance due to the calling on himself for the rescue of an 
ancient and glorious country; nor altogether to the spec- 
tacle of the shipping, over the parapet, to his right: the 
hundreds of masts rising out of the merchant river; Lon- 
don’s unrivalled mezzotint and the City rhetorician’s inex- 
haustible argument: he gained it rather from the imperious 
demand of an animated and thirsty frame for novel impres- 
sions. Commonly he was too hot with his business, and 
airy fancies above it, when crossing the bridge, to reflect 
in freshness on its wonders; though a phrase could spring 
him alive to them; a suggestion of the Foreigner, jealous, 
condemned to admire in despair of outstripping, like Satan 
worsted; or when a Premier’s fine inflation magnified the 
scene at City banquets — exciting while audible, if a 
waggery in memory; or when England’s cherished Bard, 
the Leading Article, blew bellows, and wind primed the 
lieges. 

That a phrase on any other subject was of much the 
same effect, in relation to it, may be owned; he was 
lightly kindled. The scene, however, had a sharp sparkle 
of attractiveness at the instant. Down went the twirling 
horizontal pillars of a strong tide from the arches of the 
bridge, breaking to wild water at a remove; and a reddish 
Xorthern cheek of curdling pipeing East, at shrilly puffs 
between the Tower and the Custom House, encountered it 
to whip and ridge the flood against descending tug and 
long tail of stern-ajerk empty barges; with a steamer 
slowly noseing round off the wharf-cranes, preparing to 
swirl the screw; and half- bottom-upward boats dancing 
harpooner beside their whale ; along an avenue, not fabu- 
lously golden, of the deputy masts of all nations, a wintry 
woodland, every rag aloft curling to volume; and here the 
spouts and the mounds of steam, and rolls of brown smoke 
there, variously undulated, curved to vanish ; cold blue sky 
ashift with the whirl and dash of a very Tartar cavalry of 
cloud overhead. 

Surely a scene pretending to sublimity ? 

Gazeing along that grand highway of the voyageing 


ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE 


7 


forest, your London citizen of good estate has reproached 
his country’s poets for not pouring out, succinctly and 
melodiously, his multitudinous larvae of notions begotten 
by the scene. For there are times when he would pay to 
have them sung; and he feels them big; he thinks them 
human in their bulk; they are Londinensian ; they want 
but form and tire to get them scored on the tablets of the 
quotable at festive boards. This he can promise to his 
poets. As for otherwhere than at the festive. Commerce 
invoked is a Goddess that will have the reek of those 
boards to fill her nostrils, and poet and alderman alike may 
be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them, after two sniffs 
of an idea concerning her, for the dive into the turtle- 
tureen. Heels up they go, poet first — a plummet he! 

And besides it is barely possible for our rounded citizen, 
in the mood of meditation, to direct his gaze off the bridge 
along the waterway North-eastward without beholding as 
an eye the glow of whitebait’s bow-window by the river- 
side, to the front of the summer sunset, a league or so 
down stream; where he sees, in memory savours, the 
Elysian end of Commerce: frontispiece of a tale to fetch 
us up the out-wearied spectre of old Apicius; yea, and 
urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the market for the 
purchase of a costlier mullet ! 

But is the Jew of the usury gold becoming our despot- 
king of Commerce ? 

In that case, we do not ask our country’s poets to com- 
pose a single stanza of eulogy’s rhymes — far from it. 
Far to the contrary, we bid ourselves remember the sons 
of whom we are; instead of revelling in the fruits of Com- 
merce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied win- 
dows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond Thames, away 
to the fishermen’s deeps. Old England’s native element, 
where the strenuous ancestry of a race yet and ever manful 
at the stress of trial are heard around and aloft whistling 
us back to the splendid strain of muscle, and spray fringes 
cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoop and hil- 
locks, and Death and Han are at grip for the haul. 

There we find our nationality, our poetry, no Hebrew 
competing. 

We do ; or there at least we left it. Whether to recover 


8 


ONE OF OITK CONQUEKOES 


it when wanted, is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and 
dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and coronet, might recur to 
their sea bow-legs and red-stubble chins, might take to their 
tarpaulins again ; they might renew their manhood on the 
capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they 
might roll surges to whelm a Dominant «Tew clean gone to 
the fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen of our ancient 
conception, they may teach him that he has been backslid- 
ing once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are 
for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in 
slimy spawn of lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess 
him of his greedy gettings. 

And how of the Law ? 

But the Law is always, and must ever be, the Law of 
the stronger. 

— Ay, but brain beats muscle, and what if the Jew 
should prove to have superior power of brain ? A dreaded 
hypothesis ! Why, then you see the insurgent Saxon seamen 
(of the names in two syllables with accent on the first), 
and their Danish captains, and it may be but a remnant of 
high-nosed old Norman Lord de Warenne beside them, in 
the criminal box: and presently the Jew smoking a giant 
regalia cigar on a balcony giving view of a gallows-tree. 
But we will try that : on our side, to back a native pug- 
nacity, is morality, humanity, fraternity — nature’s rights, 
aha! and who withstands them? on his, a troop of 
mercenaries ! 

— And that lands me in Bed Bepublicanism, a hop and 
a skip from Socialism! said Mr. Badnor, and chuckled 
ironically at the natural declivity he had come to. Still, 
there was an idea in it. . . . 

A short run or attempt at running after the idea, ended 
in pain to his head near the spot where the haunting word 
punctilio caught at any excuse for clamouring. 

Yet we cannot relinquish an idea that was ours; we are 
vowed to the pursuit of it. Mr. Badnor lighted on the 
tracks, by dint of a thought flung at his partner Mr. Inch- 
ling’s dread of the Jews. Inchling dreaded Scotchmen as 
well, and Americans, and Armenians, and Greeks : latterly 
Germans hardly less; but his dread of absorption in Jewry, 
signifying subjection, had often precipitated a deplorable 


THKOUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE 9 


shrug, in which Victor Eadnor now perceived the skirts of 
his idea, even to a fancy that something of the idea must 
have struck Inchling when he shrugged: the idea being 
. . . he had lost it again. Definition seemed to be an 
extirpating enemy of this idea, or she was by nature shy. 
She was very feminine; coming when she willed and flying 
when wanted. Not until nigh upon the close of his history 
did she return, full-statured and embraceable, to Victor 
Eadnor. 


CHAPTEE II 

THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE 

The fair dealing with readers demands of us, that a nar- 
rative shall not proceed at slower pace than legs of a man 
ill motion; and we are still but little more than midway 
across London Bridge. But if a man’s mind is to be taken 
as a part of him, the likening of it, at an introduction, to 
an army on the opening march of a great campaign, should 
plead excuses for tardy forward movements, in considera- 
tion of the large amount of matter yoj.i have to review 
before you can at all imagine yourselves to have made his 
acquaintance. This it is not necessary to do when you are 
set astride the enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves 
the man’s mind at home while he performs the deeds be- 
fitting him : he can indeed be rapid. Whether more active, 
is a question asking for your notions of the governing 
element in the composition of man, and of his present 
business here. The Tale inspirits one’s earlier ardours, 
when we sped without baggage, when the Impossible was 
wings to imagination, and heroic sculpture the simplest 
act of the chisel. It does not advance, ’t is true; it drives 
the whirligig circle round and round the single existing 
central point; but it is enriched with applause of the boys 
and girls of both ages in this land; and all the English 
critics heap their honours on its brave old Simplicity: — 
our national literary flag, which signalizes us while we 
float, subsequently to flap above the shallows. One may 


10 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


sigh for it. An ill-fortuned minstrel who has by fateful 
direction been brought to see with distinctness that man is 
not as much comprised in external features as the monkfy, 
will be devoted to the task of the fuller portraiture. 

After his ineffectual catching at the volatile idea, Mr. 
Eadnor found repose in thoughts of his daughter and her 
dear mother. They had begged him to put on an overccat 
this day of bitter wind, or a silken kerchief for the throat. 
Faithful to the Spring, it had been his habit since boyhood 
to show upon his person something of the hue of the vernal 
month, the white of the daisied meadow, and although he 
owned a light overcoat to dangle from shoulders at the 
Opera crush, he declined to wear it for protection. His 
gesture of shaking and expanding whenever the tender 
request was urged on him, signified a physical opposition 
to the control of garments. Mechanically now, while 
doating in fancy over the couple beseeching him, he loos- 
ened the button across his defaced waistcoat, exposed a 
large measure of chest to flaws of a wind barbed on Nor- 
wegian peaks by the brewers of cough and catarrh — horrid 
women of the whistling clouts, in the pay of our doctors. 
He braved them; he starved the profession. He was that 
man in fifty thousand who despises hostile elements and 
goes unpunished, calmly erect am.ong a sneezing and tum- 
bled host as a lighthouse overhead of breezy fleets. The 
coursing of his blood was by comparison electrical; he had 
not the sensation of cold, other than that of an effort of 
the elements to arouse him; and so quick was he, through 
this fine animation, to feel, think, act, that the three suc- 
cessive tributaries of conduct appeared as an irreflective 
flash and a gamester’s daring in the vein to men who had 
no deep knowledge of him and his lightning arithmetic 
for measuring, sounding, and deciding. 

Naturally he was among the happiest of human crea- 
tures; he willed it so, with consent of circumstances; a 
boisterous consent, as when votes are reckoned for a 
favourite candidate: excepting on the part of a small 
band of black dissentients in a corner, a minute opaque 
body, devilish in their irreconcilability, who maintain 
their struggle to provoke discord, with a cry disclosing 
the one error of his youth, the sole bad step chargeable 


THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE 11 


upon his antecedents. But do we listen to them ? Shall 
we not have them turned out? He gives the sign for it; 
and he leaves his buoying constituents to outroar them; 
and he tells a friend that it was not, as one may say, an 
error, although an erratic step : but let us explain to our 
bosom friend; it was a step quite unregretted, gloried in; 
a step deliberately marked, to be done again, were the 
time renewed : it was a step necessitated (emphatically) by 
a false preceding step; and having youth to plead for it, 
in the first instance, youth and ignorance; and secondly, 
and 0 how deeply truly! Love. Deep true love, proved 
by years, is the advocate. 

He tells himself at the same time, after lending ear to 
the advocate’s exordium and a favourite sentence, that, 
judged by the Powers (to them only can he expose the 
whole skeleton-cupboard of the case), judged by those 
clear-sighted Powers, he is exonerated. 

To be exonerated by those awful Powers, is to be 
approved. 

As to that, there is no doubt: whom they, all-seeing, 
discerning as they do, acquit they justify. 

Whom they justify, they compliment. 

They, seeing all the facts, are not unintelligent of dis- 
tinctions, as the world is. 

What, to them, is the spot of the error ? — admitting 
it as an error. They know it for a thing of convention, 
not of Nature. We stand forth to plead it in proof of an 
adherence to Nature’s laws: we affirm, that far from a 
defilement, it is an illumination and stamp of nobility. 
On the beloved who shares it with us, it is a stamp of the 
highest nobility. Our world has many ways for signifying 
its displeasure, but it cannot brand an angel. 

This was another favourite sentence of Love’s grand ora- 
tion for the defence. So seductive was it to the Powers 
who sat in judgement on the case, that they all, when the 
sentence came, turned eyes upon the angel, and they 
smiled. 

They do not smile on the condemnable. 

She, then, were he rebuked, would have strength to 
uplift him. And who, calling her his own, could be placed 
in second rank among the blissful ! 


12 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Mr. Eadnor could rationally say that he was made for 
happiness; he flew to it, he breathed, dispensed it. How 
conceive the clear-sighted celestial Powers as opposing his 
claim to that estate? Not they. He knew, for he had 
them safe in the locked chamber of his breast, to yield 
him subservient responses. The world, or Puritanic mem- 
bers of it, had pushed him to the trial once or twice — or 
had put on an air of doing so; creating a temporary dis- 
turbance, ending in a merry duet with his daughter Nesta 
Victoria: a glorious trio when her mother Natalia, sweet 
lily that she was, shook the rainwater from her cup and 
followed the good example to shine in the sun. 

He had a secret for them. 

Nesta’s promising soprano, and her mother’s contralto, 
and his baritone — a true baritone, not so well trained as 
their accurate notes — should be rising in spirited union 
with the curtain of that secret : there was matter for song 
and concert, triumph and gratulation in it. And during 
the whole passage of the bridge, he had not once cast 
thought on a secret so palpitating, the cause of the morn- 
ing’s expedition and a long year’s prospect of the present 
day ! It seemed to have been knocked clean out of it — 
punctilioed out, Fenellan might say. Nor had any com- 
binations upon the theme of business displaced it. Just 
before the fall, the whole drama of the unfolding of that 
secret was brilliant to his eyes as a scene on a stage. 

He refused to feel any sensible bruise on his head, with 
the admission that he perhaps might think he felt one: 
which was virtually no more than the feeling of a thought; 
— what his friend Dr. Peter Yatt would define as feeling 
a rotifer astir in the curative compartment of a homoeo- 
pathic globule : and a playful fancy may do that or any- 
thing. Only, Sanity does not allow the infinitely little to 
disturb us. 

Mr. Eadnor had a quaint experience of the effects of the 
infinitely little while threading his way to a haberdasher’s 
shop for new white waistcoats. Under the shadow of the 
representative statue of City Corporations and London’s 
majesty, the figure of Eoyalty, worshipful in its marbled 
redundancy, fronting the bridge, on the slope where the 
seas of fish and fruit below throw up a thin line of their 


THKOUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE 13 


drift, he stood contemplating the not unamiable, repose- 
fiilly-jolly Guelphic countenance, from the loose jowl to 
the bent knee, as if it were a novelty to him; unwilling 
to trust himself to the roadway he had often traversed, 
equally careful that his hesitation should not be seen. A 
trifle more impressible, he might have imagined the smoky 
figure and magnum of pursiness barring the City against 
him. He could have laughed aloud at the hypocrisy be- 
hind his quiet look of provincial wonderment at London’s 
sculptor’s art; and he was partly tickled as well by the 
singular fit of timidity enchaining him. Cart, omnibus, 
cab, van, barrow, donkey-tray, went by in strings, broken 
here and there, and he could not induce his legs to take 
advantage of the gaps ; he listened to a warning that he 
would be down again if he tried it, among those wheels; 
and his nerves clutched him, like a troop of household 
women, to keep him from the hazard of an exposure to 
tlie horrid crunch, pitiless as tiger’s teeth; and we may 
say truly, that once down, or once out of the rutted line, 
you are food for lion and jackal — the forces of the world 
will have you in their mandibles. 

An idea was there too; but it would not accept pursuit. 

A pretty scud overhead ?” said a voice at his ear. 

“For fine ! — to-day at least,” Mr. Kadnor affably replied 
to a stranger; and gazing on the face of his friend Fenel- 
lan, knew the voice, and laughed: “You?” He straight- 
ened his back immediately to cross the road, dismissing 
nervousness as a vapour, asking, between a cab and a van: 
“Anything doing in the City?” For Mr. Fenellan’s 
proper station faced Westward. 

The reply was deferred until they had reached the pave- 
ment, when Mr. Fenellau said: “T ’ll tell you,” and looked 
a dubious preface, to his friend’s thinking. 

But it was merely the mental inquiry following a glance 
at mud-spots on the coat. 

“We ’ll lunch; lunch with me, I must eat, tell me then,” 
said Mr. Kadnor, adding within himself: “Emptiness! 
want of food ! ” to account for recent ejaculations and 
qualms. He had not eaten for a good four hours. 

Fenellan’s tone signified to his feverish sensibility of 
the moment, that the matter was personal; and the intima- 


14 


ONE OF OtJR CONQITEKORS 


tion of a touch on domestic affairs caused sinkings in his 
vacuity, much as though his heart were having a fall. 

He mentioned the slip on the bridge, to explain his need 
to visit a haberdasher’s shop, and pointed at the waistcoat. 

Mr. Fenellan was compassionate over the Poor virgin 
of the smoky city ! ” 

They have their ready-made at these shops — last year’s 
perhaps, never mind, do for the day,” said Mr. Eadnor, 
impatient for eating, now that he had spoken of it. “A 
basin of turtle; I can’t wait. A brush of the coat; mud 
must be dry by this time. Clear turtle, I think, with a 
bottle of tlie Old Veuve. Not bad news to tell ? You like 
that Old Veuve ? ” 

“Too well to tell bad news of her,” said Mr. Fenellan 
in a manner to reassure his friend, as he intended. “You 
would n’t credit it for the Spring of the year, without the 
spotless waistcoat ? ” 

“Something of that, I suppose.” And so saying, Mr. 
Eadnor entered the shop of his quest, to be complimented 
by the shopkeeper, while the attendants climbed the ladder 
to upper stages for white-waistcoat boxes, on his being 
the hrst bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear; 
for the smallest of our gratifications in life could give a 
happy tone to this brightly-constituted gentleman. 


CHAPTEE III 

OLD ^t:uve 

They were known at the house of the turtle and the 
attractive Old Veuve: a champagne of a sobered sweetness, 
of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer 
maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their 
worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the pro- 
moting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, 
which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The 
silly girly sugary crudity has given way to womanly 
suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles ; they 


OLD VEUVE 


15 


ascend ; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come to 
a lodgement there. It conducts the youthful man to tem- 
ples of dusky thought: philosophers partaking of it are 
drawn by the arms of garlanded nymphs about their necks 
into the fathomless of inquiries. It presents us with a 
sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most. It 
bubbles over mellowness; it has, in the marriage with 
Time, extracted a spice of individuality from the saccha- 
rine: by miracle, one would say, were it not for our knowl- 
edge of the right noble issue of Time when he and good 
things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him 
and the wine-flask. There must be meanings to that effect 
in the Mythology, awaiting unravelment. For the subject 
opens to deeper than cellars, and is a tree with vast rami- 
fications of the roots and the spreading growth, whereon 
half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, 
Infernal and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, 
performing in concert, harmoniously receiving sacrificial 
oft’erings of the black or the white; and the black not 
extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell us of a certainty 
that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be 
asserted (assuming the great year for the wine, L e, com- 
binations above) that a speck of the white within us who 
drink will conquer, to rise in main ascension over volumes 
of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but confidently, 
be said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious 
birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities. 

Think as you will ; forbear to come hauling up examples 
of malarious men, in whom these pourings of the golden 
rays of life breed fogs; and be moved, since you are 
scarcely under an obligation to hunt the meaning, in toler- 
ance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration (quiver- 
ings of the reverent pen) when we find ourselves entering 
the circle of a most magnetic polarity. Take it for not 
worse than accompanying choric flourishes, in accord with 
Mr. Victor Radnor and Mr. Simeon Fenellan at their sip- 
ping of the venerable wine. 

Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged 
with a sooty maze, they praised the wine, in the iieuter 
and in the feminine; that for the glass, this for the widow- 
branded bottle: not as iDoets hymning; it was done in the 


16 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling 
to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite 
aether), and still masters of themselves and at home. 

Such a wine, in its capturing permeation of us, insists 
on being for a time a theme. 

I wonder ! ” said Mr. Eadnor, completely restored , eye- 
ing his half-emptied second glass and his boon-fellow. 

“ Low ! ” Mr. Fenellan shook head. 

“ Half a dozen dozen left ? 

‘^Nearer the half of that. And who ’s the culprit 

‘^Old days! They won’t let me have another dozen out 
of the house now.” 

They ’ll never hit on such another discovery in their 
cellar, unless they unearth a fifth corner.” 

. I don't blame them for making the price prohibitive. 
And sound as ever ! ” 

Mr. Eadnor watched the deliberate constant ascent of 
bubbles through their rose-topaz transparency. He drank. 
That notion of the dish of turtle was an inspiration of the 
right: he ought always to know it for the want of replen- 
ishment when such a man as he went quaking. His latest 
experiences of himself were incredible; but they passed, 
as the dimples of the stream. He finished his third glass. 
The bottle, like the cellar-wine, was at ebb: unlike the 
cellar-wine, it could be set flowing again. He prattled, in 
the happy ignorance of compulsion: 

“Fenellan, remember, I had a sort of right to the wine 
— to the best I could get; and this Old Veuve, more than 
any other, is a bridal wine! We heard of Giulia San- 
fredini’s marriage to come off with the Spanish Duke, and 
drank it to the toast of our little Nesta’s godmother. I ’ve 
told you. We took the girl to the Opera, when quite a 
little one — that high: — ^and I declare to you, it was mar- 
vellous! Next morning after breakfast, she plants herself 
in the middle of the room, and strikes her attitude for 
song, and positively, almost with the Sanfredini’s voice — 
illusion of it, you know, — trills us out more than I could 
have believed credible to be recollected — by a child. But 
I ’ve told you the story. We called her Fredi from that 
day. I sent the diva, with excuses and compliments, a 
nuptial present — necklace, Eoman gold work, locket- 


OLD VEUVE 


17 


pendant, containing sunny curl, and below a fine pearl; 
really pretty; telling her our grounds for the liberty. 
She replied, accepting the responsible office; touching 
letter — we found it so; framed in Predi^s room, under her 
godmother’s photograph. Fredi has another heroine now, 
though she worships her old one still; she never abandons 
her old ones. You We heard the story over and over! 

Mr. Fenellan nodded; he had a tenderness for the 
garrulity of Old Veuve, and for the damsel. Chatter on 
that subject ran pleasantly with their entertainment. 

Mr. Kadnor meanwhile scribbled, and despatched a' strip 
of his Note-book, bearing a scrawl of orders, to his office. 
He was now fully himself, benevolent, combative, gay, 
alert for amusement or the probeing of schemes to the 
quick, weighing the good and the bad in them with his 
fine touch on proportion. 

“City dead flat? A monotonous key; but it ’s about the 
same as fetching a breath after a run ; only, true, it lasts 
too long — not healthy ! Skepsey will bring me my let- 
ters. I was down in the country early this morning, 
looking over the house, with Taplow, my architect; and 
he speaks fairly well of the contractors. Yes, down at 
Lakelands, and saw my first lemon butterfly in a dell of 
sunshine, out of the wind, and had half a mind to catch 
it for Fredi, — and should have caught it myself, if I had! 
The truth is , we three are country born and bred ; we pine 
in London. Good for a season; you know my old feeling. 
They are to learn the secret of Lakelands to-morrow. It ’s 
great fun; they think I don’t see they ’ve had their suspi- 
cion for some time. You said — somebody said — Hhe 
eye of a needle for what they let slip of their secrets, and 
the point of it for penetrating yours : ’ — women. But no ; 
my dear souls did n’t prick and bother. And they dealt 
with a man in armour. I carry them down to Lakelands 
to-ihorrow, if the City ’s flat.” 

“Keeping a secret ’s the lid on a boiling pot with you,” 
Mr. Fenellan said ; and he mused on the profoundness of 
the flavour at his lips. 

“I do it.” 

“You do: up to bursting at the breast.” 

“ I keep it from Colney ! ” 


2 


18 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Vesuvius keeps it from Palmieri when shaking 

him.” 

“Has old Colney an idea of it?” 

“He has been foretelling an eruption of an edifice.” 

The laugh between them subsided to pensiveness. 

Mr. Fenellan’s delay in the delivery of his nevs was 
eloquent to reveal the one hateful topic; and this being 
seen, it waxed to such increase of size with the passing 
seconds, that prudence called for it. 

“Come!” said Mr. Eadnor. 

The appeal was understood. 

“Nothing very particular. I came into the City to look 
at a warehouse they want to mount double guard on. 
Your idea of the fireman’s night-patrol and wires has done 
wonders for the office.” 

“I guarantee the City if all my directions are followed.” 

Mr. Fenellan’s remark, that he had nothing very partic- 
ular to tell, reduced it to the mere touch upon a vexatious 
matter, which one has to endure in the ears at times ; but 
it may be postponed. So Mr. Eadnor encouraged him to 
talk of an Insurance Office Investment. Where it is all 
bog and mist, as in the City to-day, the maxim is, not to 
take a step, they agreed. Whether it was attributable to 
an unconsumed glut of the markets, or apprehensions of a 
panic, had to be considered. Both gentlemen were angry 
with the Birds on the flags of foreign nations, which would 
not imitate a sawdust Lion to couch reposefully. Inces- 
santly they scream and sharpen talons. 

“ They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all 
events,” Mr. Fenellan said. “But if we let our journals 
go on making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks 
overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game 
with our loss of the covey. An unstable London ’s no 
world’s market-place.” 

“No, no; it’s a niggardly national purse, not the jour- 
nals,” Mr. Eadnor said. “The journals are trading 
engines. Panics are grist to them; so are wars; but they 
do their duty in warning the taxpayer and rousing Parlia- 
ment. Dr. Schlesien ’s right: we go on believing that our 
God Neptune will do everything for us, and won’t see that 
Steam has paralyzed his Trident ; — good 1 You and Colney 


OLD VEUVE 


19 


are hard on Schlesien — or at him, I should say. He ’s 
right: if we won’t learn that we have become Continentals, 
we shall be marched over. Laziness, cowardice, he says.” 

“Oh, be hanged!” interrupted Fenellan. “As much of 
the former as you like. He ’s right about our ^ individual- 
ismus ’ being another name for selfishness, and showing the 
usual deficiency in external features; it ’s an individualism 
of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each 
fellow his own way. Well, then, conscript them, and 
they ’ll be all of a better pattern. The only thing to do, 
and the cheapest. By heaven! it’s the only honourable 
thing to do.” 

Mr. Radnor disapproved. conscription here.” 

“Not till you’ve got the drop of poison in your blood, 
in the form of an army landed. That will teach you to 
catch at the drug.” 

“No, Fenellan! Besides, they’ve got to land. I guar- 
antee a trusty army and navy under a contract, at two- 
thirds of the present cost. We ’ll start a National Defence 
Insurance Company after the next panic.” 

“During,” said ]Mr. Fenellan, and there was a flutter of 
laughter at the unobtrusive hint for seizing Dame England 
in the mood. 

Both dropped a sigh. 

But you must try and run down with us to Lakelands 
to-morrow,” Mr. Radnor resumed on a cheerfuller theme. 
“ You have not yet seen all I ’ve done there. And it ’s a 
castle with a drawbridge : no exchangeing of visits, as we 
did at Craye Farm and at Creckholt; we are there for 
country air; we don’t court neighbours at all — perhaps 
the elect; it will depend on Nataly’s wishes. We can 
accommodate our Concert-set, and about thirty or forty 
more, for as long as the}^ like. You see, that was my 
intention — to be independent of neighbouring society. 
Madame Callet guarantees dinners or hot suppers for eighty 
— and Armandine is the last person to be recklessly boast- 
ing. — When was it I was thinking last of Armandine ? ” 
He asked himself that, as he rubbed at the back of his 
head. 

Mr. Fenellan was reading his friend’s character by the 
light of his remarks and in opposition to them, after the 


20 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear: 
but it was amiably and trippingly, on the dance of the 
wine in his veins. 

His look, however, was one that reminded; and Mr. 
Eadnor cried: “Now! whatever it is!” 

“I had an interview: — I assure you,” Mr. Fenellan 
interposed to pacify: “the smallest of trifles, and to be 
expected : I thought you ought to know it : — an interview 
with her lawyer; office business, increase of Insurance on 
one of her City warehouses.” 

“Speak her name, speak the woman’s name; we 're talk- 
ing like a pair of conspirators,” exclaimed Mr. Eadnor. 

“He informed me that Mrs. Burinan has heard of the 
new mansion.” 

“ My place at Lakelands ? ” 

Mr. Eadnor’s dear-water eyes hardened to stony as their 
vision ran along the consequences of her having heard it. 

“Earlier this time!” he added, thrummed on the table, 
and thumped with knuckles. “I make my stand at Lake- 
lands for good! Nothing mortal moves me! ” 

“ That butler of hers — ” 

“ Jarniman, you mean: he 's her butler, yes, the scoun- 
drel — h’m — pah! Heaven forgive me! she’s an honest 
woman at least; I would n’t rob her of her little : fifty -nine 
or sixty next September, fifteenth of the month! with the 
constitution of a broken drug-bottle, poor soul! She 
hears everything from Jarniman : he catches wind of every- 
thing. All foreseen, Eenellan, foreseen. I have made 
my stand at Lakelands, and there ’s my flag till it 's hauled 
down over Victor Eadnor. London kills Nataly as well 
as Fredi — and me : that is — I can use the words to you — 
I get back to primal innocence in the country. We all 
three have the feeling. You ’re a man to understand. 
My beasts, and the wild flowers, hedge -banks, and stars. 
Fredi’s poetess will tell you. Quiet waters reflecting. I 
should feel it in Paris as well, though they have nightin- 
gales in their Bois. It ’s the rustic I want to bathe me; 
and I had the feeling at school, biting at Horace. Well, 
this is my Sabine Farm, rather on a larger scale, for the 
sake of friends. Come, and pure air, water from the 
springs, walks and rides in lanes, high sand-lanes; Nataly 


THE SECOND BOTTLE 


21 


loves them; Fredi worships the old roots of trees: she 
calls them the faces of those weedy sandy lanes. And the 
two dear souls on their own estate, Fenellan ! And their 
poultry, cows, cream. And a certain influence one has 
in the country socially. I make my stand on a home — 
not empty punctilio.” 

Mr. Fenellan repeated, in a pause, ‘‘Punctilio,” and not 
emphatically. 

“Don’t bawl the word,” said Mr. Kadnor, at the drum 
of whose ears it rang and sang. “Here in the City the 
woman’s harmless; and here,” he struck his breast. “But 
she can shoot and hit another through me. Ah, the witch ! — 
poor wretch! poor soul! Only, she ’s malignant. I could 
swear ! But Colney ’s right for once in something he says 
about oaths — ‘ dropping empty buckets,’ or something.” 

‘“ Empty buckets to haul up impotent demons, whom 
we have to pay as heavily as the ready devil himself,’ ” 
Mr. Fenellan supplied the phrase. “ Only, the moment old 
Colney moralizes, he ’s what the critics call sententious. 
We ’ve all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us.” 

“Come, Fenellan, I don’t think . . .” 

“ Oh yes, but it ’s true of me too.” 

“You reserve it for your enemies.” 

“I ’d like to distract it a bit from the biggest of ’em.” 
He pointed finger at the region of the heart. 

“Here we have Skepsey,” said Mr. Badnor, observing 
the rapid approach of a lean small figure , that in about the 
time of a straight-aimed javelin’s cast, shot from the door- 
way to the table. 


CHAPTER IV 

THE SECOND BOTTLE 

This little dart of a man came to a stop at a respectful 
distance from his master, having the look of an arrested 
needle in mechanism. His lean slip of face was an illumi- 
nation of vivacious grey from the quickest of prominent 
large eyes. He placed his master’s letters legibly on the 


22 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


table, and fell to his posture of attention, alert on stiff legs, 
the hands like sucking-cubs at play with one another. 

Skepsey waited for Mr. Fenellan to notice him. 

How about the Schools for Boxing ? ’’ that gentleman 
said. 

Deploring in motion the announcement he had to make, 
Skepsey replied : have a difficulty in getting the plan 

treated seriously: — a person of no station: — it does not 
appear of national importance. Ladies are against. They 
decline their signatures ; and ladies have great influence, 
because of the blood; which we know is very slight, rather 
healthy than not ; and it could be proved for the advantage 
of the frailer sex. They seem to be unaware of their own 
interests — ladies. The contention all around us is with 
ignorance. My plan is written ; I have shown it, and sig- 
natures of gentlemen, to many of our City notables — favour- 
able in most cases : gentlemen of the Stock Exchange highly. 
The clergy and the medical profession are quite with me.’’ 

The surgical, perhaps you mean? ” 

^^Also, sir. The clergy strongly.” 

On the grounds of — what, Skepsey? ” 

Morality. I have fully explained to them : — after his 
work at the desk all day, the young City clerk wants 
refreshment. He needs it, must have it. I propose to catch 
him on his way to his music-halls and other places, and take 
him to one of our establishments. A short term of instruc- 
tion, and he would find a pleasure in the gloves ; it would 
delight him more than excesses — beer and tobacco. The 
female in her right place, certainly.” Skepsey supplicated 
honest interpretation of his hearer, and pursued : It would 
improve his physical strength, at the same time add to his 
sense of personal dignity.” 

Would you teach females as well — to divert them from 
their frivolities ? ” 

That would have to be thought over, sir. It would be 
better for them than using their nails.” 

“ I don’t know, Skepsey : I ’m rather a Conservative 
there.” 

Yes ; with regard to the female, sir : I confess, my scheme 
does not include them. They dance; that is a healthy 
exercise. One has only to say, that it does not add to the 


THE SECOND BOTTLE 


23 


national force, in case of emergency. I look to that. And 
I am particular in proposing an exercise independent of — I 
have to say — sex. Not that there is harm in sex. But we 
are for training. I hope my meaning is clear? 

Quite. You would have boxing with the gloves to be a 
kind of monastic recreation.’^ 

Eecreation is the word, sir ; I have often admired it,” 
said Skepsey, blinking, unsure of the signification of 
monastic. 

I was a bit of a boxer once,” Mr. Fenellan said, conscious 
of height and breadth in measuring the wisp of a figure 
before him. 

Something might be done with you still, sir.” 

Skepsey paid him the encomium after a respectful sum- 
mary of his gifts in a glimpse. Mr. Fenellan bowed to him. 

Mr. Eadnor raised head from the notes he was pencilling 
upon letters perused. 

Skepsey’s craze : regeneration of the English race by 
boxing — nucleus of a national army ? ” 

^‘To face an enemy at close quarters — it teaches that, 
sir. I have always been of opinion, that courage may be 
taught. I do not say heroism. And setting aside for a 
moment thoughts of an army, we create more valuable citi- 
zens. Protection to the weak in streets and by-places : — 
shocking examples of ruffians maltreating women, in view 
of a crowd.” 

One strong man is an overmatch for your mob,” said Mr. 
Fenellan. 

Skepsey toned his assent to the diminishing thinness 
where a suspicion of the negative begins to wind upon a 
distant horn. 

Knowing his own intentions ; and before an ignorant 
mob: — strong, you say, sir? I venture my word that a 
decent lad, with science, would beat him. It is a question 
of the study and practice of first principles.” 

If you were to see a rascal giant mishandling a 
woman ? ” 

Skepsey conjured the scene by bending his head and peer- 
ing abstractedly, as if over spectacles. 

I would beg him to abstain, for his own sake.” 

Mr. Fenellan knew that the little fellow was not boasting. 


24 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


My brother Dartrey had a lesson or two from you in the 
first principles, I think ? ’’ 

“Captain Dartrey is an athlete, sir : exceedingly quick and 
clever ; a hard boxer to beat.’’ 

“You will not call him captain when you see him ; he has 
dismissed the army.” 

‘‘I much regret it, sir, much, that we have lost him. 
Captain Dartrey Denellan was a beautiful fencer. He gave 
me some instruction ; unhappily, I have to acknowledge, 
too late. It is a beautiful art. Captain Dartrey says, the 
French excel at it. But it asks for a weapon, which nature 
has not given : whereas the fists . . 

^^So,” Mr. Kadnor handed notes and papers to Skepsey: 
no sign of life ? ” 

It is not yet seen in the City, sir.” 

The first principles of commercial activity have retreated 
to earth’s maziest penetralia, where no tides are ! — is it not 
so, Skepsey ? ” said Mr. Fenellan, whose initiative and exu- 
berance in loquency had been restrained by a slight oppres- 
sion, known to guests ; especially to the guest in the earlier 
process of his magnification and illumination by virtue of a 
grand old wine; and also when the news he has to com- 
municate may be a stir to unpleasant heaps. The shining 
lips and eyes of his florid face now proclaimed speech, with 
his Puckish fancy jack-o’-lanteruing over it. Business 
hangs to swing at every City door, like a rag-shop Doll, on 
the gallows of overproduction. Stocks and Shares are 
hollow nuts not a squirrel of the lot would stop to crack for 
sight of the milky kernel mouldered to beard. Percentage, 
like a cabman without a fare, has gone to sleep inside his 
vehicle. Dividend may just be seen by tiptoe stockholders, 
twinkling heels over the far horizon. Too true ! — and our 
merchants, brokers, bankers, projectors of Companies, parade 
our City to remind us of the poor steamed fellows trooping 
out of the burst-boiler-room of the big ship Leviathan, in 
old years ; a shade or two paler than the crowd o’ the 
passengers, apparently alive and conversible, but corpses, all 
of them to lie their length in flfteen minutes.” 

^^And you, Fenellan?” cried his host, inspired for a 
second bottle by the lovely nonsense of a voluble friend 
wound up to the mark. 


THE SECOND BOTTLE 25 

Doctor of the ship ! with this prescription ! ’’ Mr, 
Fenellan held up his glass. 

Empty ? ’’ 

Mr. Fenellan made it completely so. Confident ! he 
affirmed. 

An order was tossed to the waiter, and both gentlemen 
screwed their lips in relish of his heavy consent to score off 
another bottle from the narrow list. 

At the office in forty minutes/’ Skepsey’s master nodded 
to him and shot him forth, calling him back : By the way, 
in case a man named Jarniman should ask to see me, you 
turn him to the rightabout.” 

Skepsey repeated : Jarniman ! ” and fiew. . 

A good servant,” Mr. Radnor said. Few of us think 
of our country so much, whatever may be said of the specific 
he offers. Colney has impressed him somehow immensely : 
he studies to write too ; pushes to improve himself ; alto- 
gether a worthy creature.” 

The second bottle appeared. The waiter, in sincerity a 
reluctant executioner, heightened his part for the edification 
of the admiring couple. 

^^Take heart, Benjamin,” said Mr. Fenellan; ^^it’s only 
the bottle dies ; and we are the angels above to receive the 
spirit.” 

I ’m thinking of the house,” Benjamin replied. He told 
them that again. 

“ It ’s the loss of the fame of having the wine, that he 
mourns. But, Benjamin,” said Mr. Fenellan, the fame 
enters into the partakers of it, and we spread it, and per- 
petuate it for you.” 

‘^That don’t keep a house upright,” returned Benjamin. 

Mr. Fenellan murmured to himself: ‘^True enough, it’s 
elegy, though we perform it through a trumpet ; and there ’s 
not a doubt of our being down or having knocked the world 
down, if we ’re loudly praised.” 

Benjamin waited to hear approval sounded on the lips : 
uncertain as a woman is a wine of ticklish age. The 
gentlemen nodded, and he retired. 

A second bottle, just as good as the first, should, one 
thoughtlessly supposes, procure us a similar reposeful and 
excursive enjoyment, as of men lying on their backs and 


26 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


flying imagination like a kite. The effect was quite other. 
Mr. Radnor drank hastily and spoke with heat: ‘^Yoii told 
me all ? tell me that ! ’’ 

Mr. Fenellan gathered himself together ; he sipped, and 
relaxed his bracing. But there really was a bit more to 
tell : not much, was it ? Not likely to puff a gale on the 
voluptuous indolence of a man drawn along by Nereids over 
sunny sea- waves to behold the birth of the Foam-Goddess ? 

According to Carling, her lawyer; that is, he hints she 
meditates a blow.’’ 

Mrs. Burman means to strike a blow ? ” 

The lady.” 

Does he think I fear any — does he mean a blow with 
a weapon ? Is it a legal . . . ? At last ? Fenellan I ” 

^^So I fancied I understood.” 

“ But can the good woman dream of that as a blow to 
strike and hurt, for a punishment ? — that ’s her one aim.” 

She may have her hallucinations.” 

But a blow — what a word for it ! But it ’s life to us ! 
life ! It ’s the blow we ’ve prayed for. Why, you know it ! 
Let her strike, we bless her. We ’vo never had an ill feel- 
ing to the woman ; utterly the contrary — pity, pity, pity ! 
Let her do that, we ’re at her feet, my Nataly and I. If 
you knew what my poor girl suffers ! She ’s a saint at the 
stake. Chiefly on behalf of her family. Fenellan, you may 
have a sort of guess at my fortune': I ’ll own to luck ; I put 
in a claim to courage and calculation . . .” 

You ’ve been a bulwark to your friends.” 

^^All, Fenellan, all — stocks, shares, mines, companies, 
industries at home and abroad — all, at a sweep, to have 
the woman strike that blow ! Cheerfully would I begin to 
build a fortune over again — singing ! Ha ! the woman has 
threatened it before. It ’s probably feline play with us.” 

His chin took support, he frowned. 

You may have touched her.” 

“ She won’t be touched, and she won’t be driven. What ’s 
the secret of her ? I can’t guess, I never could. She ’s a 
riddle.” 

Riddles with wigs and false teeth have to be taken and 
shaken for the ardently sought secret to reveal itself,” said 
Mr. Fenellan. 


THE SECOND BOTTLE 


27 


His picture, with the skeleton issue of any shaking, smote 
Mr. Kadiior’s eyes, they turned over. Oh ! — her charms ! 
She had a desperate belief in her beauty. The woman ^s 
undoubtedly charitable ; she ’s not without a mind — sort of 
mind : well, it shows no crack till it ^s put to use. Heart ! 
yes, against me she has plenty of it. They say she used to 
be courted ; she talked of it : ^ my courtiers, Mr. Victor ! ’ 
There, heaven forgive me, I wouldn’t mock at her to 
another.” 

^^It looks as if she were only inexorably human,” said 
Mr. Fenellan, crushing a delicious gulp of the wine, that 
foamed along the channel to flavour. ^^We read of the 
tester of a bandit-bed ; and it flattened unwary recumbents 
to pancakes. An escape from the like of that seems plead- 
able, should be : none but the drowsy would fail to jump 
out and run, or the insane.” 

Mr. Eadnor was taken with the illustration of his case. 

For the sake of my sanity, it was ! to preserve my . . . but 
any word makes nonsense of it. Could — I must ask you — 
could any sane man — you were abroad in those days, hor- 
rible days ! and never met her : I say, could you consent to 
be tied — I admit the vow, ceremony, so forth — tied to — I 
was barely twenty-one : I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in 
reason an engagement — which is, I take it, a mutual plight 
of faith, in good faith ; that is, with capacity on both sides 
to keep the engagement : between the man you know I was 
in youth and a more than middle-aged woman crazy up to 
the edge of the cliff — as Colney says half the world is, and 
she positively is when her spite is roused. Ho, Fenellan, 
I have nothing on my conscience with regard to the woman. 
She had wealth : I left her not one penny the worse for — 
but she was not one to reckon it, I own. She could be gen- 
erous, was, with her money. If she had struck this blow — 
I know she thought of it : or if she would strike it now, I 
could not only forgive her, I could beg forgiveness.” 

A sight of that extremity fetched prickles to his forehead. 

You Ve borne your part bravely, my friend.” 

I ! ” Mr. Eadnor shrugged at mention of his personal 
burdens. ‘^Praise my Hataly if you like ! Made for one 
another, if ever two in this world ! You know us both, and 
do you doubt it ? The sin would have been for us two to 


28 


ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


meet and — but enough when I say, that I am she, she me, 
till death and beyond it : that ’s my firm faith. Nataly 
teaches me the religion of life, and you may learn what 
that is when you fall in love with a woman. Eighteen — 
nineteen — twenty years ! ” 

Tears fell from him, two drops. He blinked, bugled in 
his throat, eyed his watch, and smiled : The finishing 
glass ! We should have had to put Colney to bed. Few 
men stand their wine. You and I are not lamed by it ; we 
can drink and do business : my first experience in the City 
was, that the power to drink — keeping a sound head — 
conduces to the doing of business.’’ 

It ’s a pleasant way of instructing men to submit to 
their conqueror.” 

If it doubles the energies, mind.” 

Not if it fiddles inside. I confess to that effect upon 
me. I ’ve a waltz going on, like the snake with the tail in 
his mouth, eternal ; and it won’t allow of a thought upon 
Investments.” 

Consult me to-morrow,” said Mr. Eadnor, somewhat 
pained for having inconsiderately misled the man he 
had hitherto helpfully guided. You ’ve looked at the 
warehouse ? ” 

That ’s performed.” 

Make a practice of getting over as much of your business 
in the early morning as you well can.” 

Mr. Eadnor added hints of advice to a frail humanity: 
he was indulgent, the giant spoke in good fellowship. It 
would have been to have strained his meaning, for purposes 
of sarcasm upon him, if one had taken him to boast of a 
personal exemption from our common weakness. 

He stopped, and laughed : Now I ’m pumping my pulpit 
— eh ? You come with us to Lakelands. I drive the ladies 
down to my office, ten a.m. : if it ’s fine; train half-past. 
We take a basket. By the way, I had no letter from Dartrey 
last mail.” 

He has buried his wife. It happens to some men.” 

Mr. Eadnor stood gazing. He asked for the name of the 
place of the burial. He heard without seizing it. A simu- 
lacrum spectre-spark of hopefulness shot up in his imagina- 
tion, glowed and quivered, darkening at the utterance of the 


THE SECOND BOTTLE 


29 


Dutch syllables, leaving a tinge of witless envy. Dartrey 
Fenellan had buried the wife whose behaviour vexed and 
dishonoured him : and it was in Africa ! One would have 
to go to Africa to be free of the galling. But Dartrey had 
gone, and he was free ! — The strange faint freaks of our 
sensations when struck to leap and throw off their load after 
a long affliction, play these disorderly pranks on the brain ; 
and they are faint, but they come in numbers, they are 
recurring, always in ambush. We do not speak of them : 
we have not words to stamp the indefinite things ; generally 
we should leave them unspoken if we had the words ; we 
know them as out of reason : they haunt us, pluck at us, 
fret us, nevertheless. 

Dartrey free, he was relieved of the murderous drama 
incessantly in the mind of shackled men. 

It seemed like one of the miracles of a divine interven- 
tion, that Dartrey should be free, suddenly free ; and free 
while still a youngish man. He was in himself a wonderful 
fellow, the pick of his country for vigour, gallantry, trusti- 
ness, high-mindedness ; his heavenly good fortune decked 
him as a prodigy. 

No harm to the head from that fall of yours ? Mr. 
Fenellan said. 

^^None.^^ Mr. Kadnor withdrew his hand from head to 
hat, clapped it on and cried cheerily : Now to business ; 
as men may, who have confidence in their ability to con- 
centrate an instant attention upon the substantial. You 
dine with us. The usual Quartet : Peridon, Pempton, Col- 
ney, Yatt, or Catkin : Priscilla Graves and Nataly : the Eev. 
Septimus : Cormyn and his wife : Young Dudley Sowerby 
and I — flutes; he has precision, as naughty Fredi said, 
when some one spoke of expression. In the course of the 
evening. Lady Grace, perhaps : you like her.’’ 

Human nature in the upper circle is particularly 
likeable.” 

Fenellan,” said Mr. Eadnor, emboldened to judge hope- 
fully of his fortunes by mere pressure of the thought of 
Dartrey’s, I put it to you : would you say, that there is 
anything this time behind your friend Carling’s report ? ” 

Although it had not been phrased as a report, Mr. Fenel- 
lan’ s answering look and gesture, and a run of indiscrimi- 


30 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


nate words, enrolled it in that form, greatly to the inspiriting 
of Mr. Eadnor. 

Old Veuve in one, to the soul of Old Veuve in the other, 
they recalled a past day or two, touched the skies ; and 
merriment or happiness in the times behind them held a 
mirrOr to the present : or the hour of the reverse of happi- 
ness worked the same effect by contrast : so that notions of 
the singular election of us by Dame Fortune, sprang like 
vinous bubbles. For it is written, that however powerful 
you be, you shall not take the Winegod on board to enter- 
tain him as a simple passenger ; and you may captain your 
vessel, you may pilot it, and keep to your reckonings, and 
steer for all the ports you have a mind to, even to doing 
profitable exchange with Armenian and Jew, and still you 
shall do the something more, which proves that the Winegod 
is on board: he is the pilot of your blood if not the captain 
of your thoughts. 

Mr. Fenellan was unused to the copious outpouring of 
Victor Eadnor’s confidences upon his domestic affairs ; and 
the unwonted excitement of Victors manner of speech 
would have perplexed him, had there not been such a 
fiddling of the waltz inside him. 

Payment for the turtle and the bottles of Old Veuve was 
performed apart with Benjamin, while Simeon Fenellan 
strolled out of the house, questioning a tumbled mind as to 
what description of suitable entertainment, which would be 
dancing and flirting and fal-lallery in the season of youth, 
London City could provide near meridian hours for a man 
of middle age carrying his bottle of champagne, like a guest 
of an old-fashioned wedding-breakfast. For although he 
could stand his wine as well as his friend, his friend^s 
potent capacity martially after the feast to buckle to busi- 
ness at a sign of the clock, was beyond him. It pointed to 
one of the embodied elements, hot from Nature’s workshop. 
It told of the endurance of powers, that partly explained 
the successful, astonishing career of his friend among a 
people making urgent, if unequal, demands perpetually 
upon stomach and head. 


THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD 


31 


CHAPTEE V 

THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD 

In that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, 
once famous, The Eajah in London (London, Limbo 
and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the long wash of 
Press-matter, the reflection — not unknown to philosophical 
observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental 
Prince — produced by his observation of the march of 
London citizens Eastward at morn. Westward at eve, attrib- 
utes their practice to a survival of the Zoroastrian form of 
worship. His Minister, favourable to the people or for the 
sake of fostering an idea in his Master’s head, remarks, 
that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to 
her God. The Eajah, it would appear, frowns interroga- 
tively, in the princely fashion, accusing him of obscureness 
of speech : — princes and the louder members of the grey 
public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that 
which they do not immediately comprehend. It is explained 
by the Minister : not even the flower, he says, would hold 
constant, as they, to the constantly unseen — a trebly cata- 
phractic Invisible. The Eajah professes curiosity to know 
how it is that the singular people nourish their loyalty, 
since they cannot attest to the continued being of the object 
in which they put their faith. He is informed by his pros- 
trate servant of a settled habit they have of diligently 
seeking their Divinity, hidden above, below ; and of copi- 
ously taking inside them doses of what is denied to their 
external vision : thus they fortify credence chemically on 
an abundance of meats and liquors ; fire they eat, and they 
drink fire ; they become consequently instinct with fire. 
Necessarily therefore they believe in fire. Believing, they 
worship. Worshipping, they march Eastward at morn, 
Westward at eve. Eor that way lies the key, this way the 
cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel. 

According to Stage directions. The Eajah and his 
Minister Enter a Gin-Falace, It is to witness a service 
that they have learnt to appreciate as Anglicanly religious. 


32 


ONE OF OIJIl CONQUEROES 


On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they 
speak of the hatted sect, which is most, or most commer- 
cially, succoured and fattened by our rule there : they wave 
adieu to the conquering Islanders, as to Parsees beneath a 
cloud.’’ 

The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal 
of a medical pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches, 
traceries, horrid blots, diagrams with numbers referring to 
notes, of the various maladies caused by the prolonged prose- 
cution of that form of worship. 

^^But can they suffer so and live ?” exclaims the Rajah, 
vexed by the physical sympathetic twinges which set him 
wincing. 

Science,” his Minister answers, took them up where 
Nature, in pity of their martyrdom, dropped them. They 
do not live ; they are engines, insensible things of repairs 
and patches; insteamed to pursue their infuriate course, 
to the one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing of 
them, on peril of an instant suspension if they deviate a 
step or stop : nor do they.” 

The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key 
of the riddle of their power to vanquish. In some apparent 
allusion to an Indian story of a married couple who success- 
fully made their way, he accounts for their solid and resist- 
less advance, resembling that of — 

The douUy-wedded man and loife, 

Pledged to each other and against the world 
With mutual onion. 

One would like to think of the lengthened tide-flux of 
pedestrian citizens facing South-westward, as being drawn 
by devout attraction to our nourishing luminary : at the 
hour, mark, when the Norland cloud-king, after a day of 
wild invasion, sits him on his restful bank of blueish smack- 
o’ -cheek red above Whitechapel, to spy where his last puff 
of icy javelins pierces and dismembers the vapoury masses 
in cluster about the circle of flame descending upon the 
greatest and most elevated of Admirals at the head of the 
Strand, with illumination of smoke-plumed chimneys, house- 
roofs, window-panes, weather-vanes, monument and pedi- 
mental monsters, and omnibus-umbrella. One would fain 


THE LONDON WALK WESTWAKD 


33 


believe that they advance admireing; they are assuredly 
made handsome by the beams. No longer mere concurrent 
atoms of the furnace of business (from coal-dust to sparks 
rushing, as it were, on respiratory blasts of an enormous 
engine’s centripetal and centrifugal energy), their step is 
leisurely to meet the rosy Dinner, which is ever at see-saw 
with the God of Light in his fall ; the mask of the noble 
human visage upon them is not roughened, as at midday, by 
those knotted hard ridges of the scrambler’s hand seen 
from forehead down to jaw ; when indeed they have all the 
appearance of sour scientific productions. And unhappily 
for the national portrait, in the Poem quoted, the Eajah’s 
Minister chose an hour between morning and meridian, or 
at least before an astonished luncheon had come to com- 
posure inside their persons, for drawing his Master’s atten- 
tion to the quaint similarity of feature in the units of the 
busy antish congregates they had travelled so far to visit 
and to study : 

These Britons wear 
The driven and perplexed look of men 
Begotten hastily Hwixt business hours. 

It could not have been late afternoon. 

These Orientals should have seen them, with Victor 
Eadnor among them, fronting the smoky splendours of the 
sunset. In April, the month of piled and hurried cloud, it 
is a Eape of the Sabines overhead from all quarters, either 
one of the winds brawnily larcenous ; and London, smoking 
royally to the open skies, builds images of a dusty epic fray 
for possession of the portly dames. There is immensity, 
swinging motion, collision, dusky richness of colouring, to 
the sight 5 and to the mind idea. London presents it. If 
we can allow ourselves a moment for not inquireing scrupu- 
lously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe 
kitchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the 
earth of the works of man, speaking a grander tongue than 
barren sea or wood or wilderness. Just a moment ; it goes ; 
as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ in a street has drawn 
us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another harshly 
crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a 
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggarwoman wails 


34 


ONE OE OUR CONQUERORS 


her hymn. For the pinched are here, the diiinerless, the 
weedy, the gutter-growths, the forces repressing them. 
That grand tongue of the giant City inspires none human 
to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An embit- 
tered Muse of Beason prompts her victims to the composi- 
tion of the adulator}^ Essay and of the Leading Article, 
that she may satiate an angry irony upon those who pay fee 
for their filling with the stuff. Song of praise she does not 
permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking picture is 
accorded, and no more. For this London, this England, 
Europe, world, but especially this London, is rather a thing 
for hospital operations than for poetic rhapsody ; in aspect, 
too, streaked scarlet and pock-pitted under the most cum- 
brous of jewelled tiaras ; a Titanic work of long-tolerated 
pygmies ; of whom the leaders, until sorely discomforted in 
body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour, will 
impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conserva- 
tism of diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low 
down beneath material accumulations that it is inexpressive, 
powerless to drive the ponderous bulk to such excisings, 
purgeings, purify ings as might — as may, we will suppose, 
render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse 
of Reason ; ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of 
Song. 

But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has 
fallen upon London, the Rajah remarks : 

Monogamic Societies present 

A decent visage and a hideous rear. 

His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) 
would have them not to move on, that they may preserve 
among beholders the impression of their handsome frontage. 
Night, however, will come; and they, adoreing the decent 
face, are moved on, made to expose what the Rajah sees. 
Behind his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of 
his conquerors ; he pushes his questions farther tlian the 
need for them ; his Minister the same ; apparently to retain 
the discountenanced people in their state of exposure. Up 
to the time of the explanation of the puzzle on board the 
departing vessel (on the road to Windsor, at the Premiers 
reception, in the cell of the Police, in the presence of the 


THE LONDON WALK WEStWAED 


35 


Magistrate — whose crack of a totally inverse decision 
upon their case, when he becomes acquainted with the titles 
and station of these imputedly peccant, refreshes them), 
they hold debates over the mysterious contrarieties of a 
people professing in one street what they confound in the 
next, and practising by day a demureness that yells with 
the cat of the tiles at night. 

Granting all that, it being a transient novelist’s business 
to please the light-winged hosts which live for the hour, 
and give him his only chance of half of it, let him identify 
himself with them, in keeping to the quadrille on the 
surface and shirking the disagreeable. 

Clouds of high colour above London City are as the light 
of the Goddess to lift the angry heroic head over human. 
They gloriously transfigure. A Murillo beggar is not more 
■precious than sight of London in any of the streets ad- 
mitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun’s 
hand so speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some 
i olive mechanic of street-organs has quickened little chil- 
^dren’s legs to rhythmic footing, they strike on thoughts 
'braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the country 
though he was, would have been the first to say it. He 
(would indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London 
jas a theme, to a citizen of London ardent for the clear air 
lout of it, you have roused an orator; you have certainly 
'fired a magazine, and must listen to his reminiscences of 
one of its paragraphs or pages. 

The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing 
Kelson’s cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright- 
i faced amid a crowd of the irradiated, emerged from the 
[tideway to cross the square, having thoughts upon Art, 
which were due rather to the suggestive proximity of the 
National Gallery than to the Flemish mouldings of cloud- 
forms under Venetian brushes. His purchases of pictures 
had been his unhappiest ventures. He had relied and 
reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics ; who are some- 
times unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are 
fatal. He was led to the conclusion that our modern-lauded 
pictures do not ripen. They have a chance of it, if abused. 
But who thinks of buying the abused? - Exalted by the 
critics, they have, during the days of Exhibition, a glow, a 


36 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


significance or a fun, abandoning them where examination 
is close and constant, and the critic’s trumpet-note dispersed 
to the thinness of the fee for his blowing. As to foreign 
pictures, classic pictures, Victor had known his purse to 
leap for a Eaphael with a history in stages of descent from 
the Master, and critics to swarm : a Eaphael of the dealers, 
exposed to be condemned by the critics, universally derided. 
A real Eaphael in your house is aristocracy to the roof-tree. 
But the wealthy trader will reach to title before he may 
hope to get the real Eaphael or a Titian. Yet he is tlie one 
who would, it may be, after enjoyment of his prize, bequeath 
it to the nation : — Pkesented to the Nation by Victor 
Montgomery Eadnor. There stood the letters in gilt ; and 
he had a thrill of his generosity ; for few were the generous 
acts he could not perform ; and if an object haunted the 
deed, it came of his trader’s habit of mind. 

He revelled in benevolent projects of gifts to the nation, 
which would coat a sensitive name. Say, an ornamental 
City Square, flowers, fountains, afternoon bands of music : 
comfortable seats in it, and a shelter, and a ready supply of 
good cheap coffee or tea. Tobacco ? why not rolls of honest 
tobacco! nothing so much soothes the labourer. A volume 
of plans for the benefit of London smoked out of each ascend- 
ing pile in his brain. London is at night a moaning outcast 
round the policeman’s legs. What of an all-night-long, cosy, 
brightly-lighted, odoriferous coffee-saloon for rich or poor, 
on the model of the hospitable Paduan ? Owner of a penny, 
no soul among us shall be rightly an outcast. . . . 

Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people 
as a cordial at the bar of benevolent intentions. But Victor 
was not the man to steal his refreshments in that known 
style. He meant to make deeds of them, as far as he 
could, considering their immense extension; and except 
for the sensitive social name, he was of single-minded 
purpose. 

Turning to the steps of a chemist’s shop to get a prescrip- 
tion made up for his Nataly’s doctoring of her domestics, he 
was arrested by a rap on his elbow; and no one was near; 
and there could not be a doubt of the blow — a sharp hard 
stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing. His head, at 
the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively : owing to which 


THE LONDON \YALK WESTWARD 


37 


or indifference to the prescription, as of no instant require- 
ment, he pursued his course, resembling mentally the 
wanderer along a misty beach, who hears cannon across the 
waters. 

He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock : he 
could not remember much of pain. How about intimations ? 
His asking caused a smile. 

Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into 
view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile 
cerebellum ; recollecting a couplet from the pen of the dis- 
respectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall : his head and 
' his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought. 

All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the 
chemisPs shop : and that belongs to the minor involutions of 
circumstances and the will. It passed like a river’s wrinkle. 
He read the placards of the Opera, reminding himself of the 
day when it was the single Opera-house ; and now we have 
two — or three. We have also a distracting couple of 
Clowns and Pantaloons in our Pantomimes : though Colney 
says that the multiplication of the pantaloon is a distinct 
advance to representative truth — and bother Colney ! Two 
Columbines also. We forbear to speak of men, but where 
jis the boy who can set his young heart upon two Columbines 
at once! Victor felt the boy within him cold to both: and 
in his youth he had doated on the solitary twirling spangled 
lovely Fairy. The tale of a delicate lady dancer leaping as 
the kernel out of a nut from the arms of Harlequin to the 
legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth 
living, by repute, with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, 
despite her starry past, as any to be shown in a country 
! breeding the like abundantly, had always delighted him. 
It seemed a reconcilement of opposing stations, a defeat of 
: Puritanism. Ay, and poor women ! — women in the worser 
plight under the Puritan’s eye. They may be erring and 
1 good : yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up! 

I Read the history of the error. But presently we shall 
' teach the Puritan to act by the standards of his religion. 
All is coming right — must come right. Colney shall be 
confounded. 

. Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan’s hint regarding 
i the designs of Mrs. Burman.” 


38 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


His Kataly might have to go through a short sharp term 
of scorching — Godiva to the gossips. 

She would come out of it glorified. She would be recon- 
ciled with her family. With her story of her devotion to 
the man loving her, the world would know her for the 
heroine she was : a born lady, in appearance and manner an 
empress among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any 
court, before the sternest public. Mrs. Burman had thrown 
her into temptation’s way. It was a story to touch thcv 
heart, as none other ever written. Not over all the earth 
was there a woman equalling his Nataly ! 

And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses 
envious : — she would inherit ... he ran up an arith- 
metical column, down to a line of figures in addition, dur- 
ing three paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan had said of 
little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling 
as mid-sea foam. Happy he who wins her! But she was 
one of the young women who are easily pleased and hardly 
enthralled. Her father strained his mind for the shape 
of the man to accomplish the feat. Whether she had 
an ideal of a youth in her feminine head, was beyond his 
guessing. She was not the damsel to weave a fairy 
waistcoat for the identical prince, and try it upon all 
comers to discover him : as is done by some ; excuseably, 
if we would be just. Nesta was of the elect, for whom 
excuses have not to be made. She would probably like a 
flute-player best; because her father played the flute, and 
she loved him — laughably a little maiden’s reason ! Her 
father laughed at her. 

Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may 
see black balls raining, the narrow way between ducal 
mansions offers prospect of the sweep of greensward, all 
but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the dance. ■ 

Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream 
of gaining way to an alliance with one of these great , 
surrounding houses; and he had a passion for the acquisi- 
tion of money as a means. And it has to be confessed, 
he had sacrificed in youth a slice of his youth, to gain it 
without labour — usually a costly purchase. It had ended 
disastrously: or say, a running of the engine off the rails, 
and a speedy re-establishment of traffic. Could it be a 


I 


THE LONDON WALK WESTWAKD 


39 


loss, that had led to the winning of his ^^ataly ? Can 
we really loathe the first of the steps w’hen the one in due 
sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness ? If we have been 
righted to health by a medical draught, we are bound to 
be respectful to our drug. And so we are, in spite of 
Nature’s wry face and shiver at a mention of what we went 
1 through during those days, those horrible days : — hide 
j them! 

The smothering of them from sight set them sounding: 

{ he had to listen. Colney Durance accused him of entering 
j into bonds with somebody’s grandmother for the simple 
I sake of browsing on her thousands : a picture of himself 
I too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of accept- 
! ance. Consequently he struck away to the other extreme 
I of those who have a choice in mixed motives : he protested 
I that compassion had been the cause of it. Looking 
at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human 
frailty — perhaps a wish to join the ranks of the wealthy 

— compassion for the woman as the principal motive. 
How often had she not in those old days praised his gen- 
erosity for allying his golden youth to her withered age 

— Mrs. Burman’s very words! And she was a generous 
woman — or had been: she was generous in saying that. 
Well, and she was generous in having a well-born, well- 
bred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her com- 
panion , when it was a case of need for the dear girl ; and 
compassionately insisting, against remonstrances : — ■ they 
were spoken by him, though they were but partial. How, 
then, had she become — at least, how was it that she could 
continue to behave as the vindictive Fury who persecuted 
remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells 
round every place where he and his dear one pitched 
their tent! 

But at last she had come to charity, as he could well 
believe. Not too late! Victor’s feeling of gratitude to 
Mrs. Burman assured him it was genuine because of his 
genuine conviction, that she had determined to end her 
incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with 
him: and he had always been ready to “forget and for- 
give.” A truly beautiful old phrase! It thrilled one of 
the most susceptible of men. 


40 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


His well-kept secret of the spacious country-house 
danced him behind a sober demeanour from one park to 
another; and along beside the drive to view of his town- 
house — unbeloved of the inhabitants , although by acknowl- 
edgement it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her 
sense of justice in depreciation, ‘‘good accommodation/’ 
Nataly was at home, he was sure. Time to be dressing : 
sun sets at six-forty, he said, and glanced at the stained 
West, with an accompanying vision of outspread primroses 
flooding banks of shadowy fields near Lakelands. 

He crossed the road and rang. 

Upon the opening of the door, there was a cascade of 
muslin downstairs. His darling Fredi stood out of it, a 
dramatic Undine. 


CHAPTER VI 

NATALY 

“ II segreto ! ” the girl cried commandingly, with a fore- 
finger at his breast. 

He crossed arms, toning in similar recitative, with 
anguish, “ Dove volare ! ” 

They joined in half a dozen bars of operatic duet. 

She flew to him, embraced and kissed. 

“ I must have it, my papa ! unlock. I ’ve been spying 
the bird on its hedgerow nest so long! And this morning, 
my own dear cunning papa, were n’t you as bare as winter 
twigs? ‘To-morrow perhaps we will have a day in the 
country.’ To go and see the nest? Only, please, not a 
big one. A real nest; where mama and I can wear dairy- 
maid’s hat and apron all day — the style you like; and 
strike roots. We ’ve been torn away two or three times: 
twice, I know.” 

“Fixed, this time; nothing shall tear us up,” said her 
father, moving on to the stairs, with an arm about her. 

“So, it is ? . . .” 

“She ’s amazed at her cleverness! ” 

“A nest for three ?” 


NATALY 


41 


‘‘We must have a friend or two.” 

“ And pretty country ? ” 

“Trust her papa for that.” 

“Nice for walking and running over fields? No rich 
people ? ” 

“ How escape that rabble in England ! as Colney says. 
It ’s a place for being quite independent of neighbours, 
free as air.” 

“ Oh ! bravo ! ” 

“And Fredi will have her horse, and mama her pony- 
i carriage; and Eredi can have a swim every Sumner 
I morning.” 

I ■ “A swim ? ” Her note was dubious. “ A river ? ” 

I “A good long stretch — fairish, fairish. Bit of a lake; 

; bathing-shed; the Naiad’s bower: pretty water to see.” 

“ Ah ! And has the house a name ? ” 

“Lakelands. I like the name.” 

“Papa gave it the name! ” 

“There’s nothing he can conceal from his girl. Only 
; now and then a little surprise.” 

j “And his girl is off her head with astonishment. But 
I tell me, who has been sharing the secret with you ? ” 

! “Fredi strikes home! And it is true, you dear; I must 
' have a confidant: Simeon Fenellan.” 

“ Not Mr. Durance ? ” 

He shook out a positive negative. “ I leave Colney to 
his guesses. He ’d have been prophesying fire to the 
i works before the completion.” 

“Then it is not a dear old house, like Craye and Creck- 
. holt?” 

“ Wait and see to-morrow.” 

He spoke of the customary guests for Concert practice ; 
j the music, instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo; 
and advising the girl to be quick, as she had but twenty- 
five minutes, he went humming and trilling into his 
dressing-room. 

Nesta signalled at her mother’s door for permission to 
enter. She slipped in, saw that the maid was absent, and 
said: “Yes, mama; and prepare, I feared it; I was sure.” 
Her mother breathed a little moan : “ Not a cottage ? ” 
“He has not mentioned it to Mr. Durance.” 


42 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


“Why not?’’ 

“]\Ir. Fenellan has been his confidant.” 

“ My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without 
speaking. You don’t know for certain yet ?” 

“ It ’s a large estate, mama, and a big new house.” 

Nataly’s bosom sank. “Ah me! here’s misery! I 
ought to have known. And too late now it has gone so far ! 
But I never imagined he would be building.” 

She caught herself languishing at her toilette-glass, as 
if her beauty were at stake; and shut her eyelids angrily. 
To be looking in that manner, for a mere suspicion, was 
too foolish. But Nesta’s divinations were target-arrows; 
they fiew to the mark. Could it have been expected that 
Victor would ever do anything on a small scale ? 0 the 

dear little lost lost cottage ! She thought of it with a 
strain of the arms of womanhood’s longing in the un- 
blessed wife for a babe. For the secluded modest cottage 
would not rack her with the old anxieties, beset her with 
suspicions. . . . 

“My child, you won’t possibly have time before the 
dinner-hour,” she said to Nesta, dismissing her and taking 
her kiss of comfort with a short and straining look out of 
the depths. 

Those bitter doubts of the sentiments of neighbours are 
an incipient dislike, when one’s own feelings to the neigh- 
bours are kind, could be affectionate. We are distracted, 
perverted, made strangers to ourselves by a false position. 

She heard his voice on a carol. Men do not feel this 
doubtful position as women must. They have not the 
same to endure ; the world gives them land to tread, where 
women are on breaking seas. Her Nesta knew no more 
than the pain of being torn from a home she loved. But 
now the girl was older, and if once she had her imagination 
awakened, her fearful directness would touch the spot, 
question, bring on the scene to-come, necessarily to-come, 
dreaded much more than death by her mother. But if it 
might be postponed till the girl was nearer to an age of 
grave understanding, with some knowledge of our world, 
some comprehension of a case that could be pleaded ! — 

He sang: he never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed 
it; and in her present wrestle with the scheme of a large 


NATALY 


43 


country estate involving new intimacies, anxieties, the 
courtship of rival magnates, followed by the wretched old 
cloud, and the imposition upon them to bear it in silence 
though they knew they could plead a case, at least before 
charitable and discerning creatures or before heaven, the 
despondent lady could have asked whether he was per- 
fectly sane. 

Who half so brilliantly! — Depreciation of him, fetched 
up at a stroke the glittering armies of her enthusiasm. — 
He had proved it; he proved it daily in conflicts and in 
victories that dwarfed emotional troubles like hers: yet 
they were something to bear, hard to bear, at times 
un bearable. 

But those were times of weakness. Let anything be 
doubted rather than the good guidance of the man who was 
her breath of life I Wliither he led, let her go, not only 
submissively, exultingly. 

Thus she thought, under pressure of tlie knowledge, that 
unless rushing into conflicts bigger than conceivable, she 
had to do it, and should therefore think it. 

This was the prudent woman’s clear deduction from the 
state wherein she found herself, created by the one first 
great step of the mad woman. Her surrender then might 
be likened to the detachment of a flower on the river’s 
bank by swell of flood: she had no longer root of her own; 
away she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasion- 
ally a crashing fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and 
once more the sunny whirling surface. Strange to think, 
she had not since then power to grasp in her abstract mind 
a notion of stedfastness without or within. 

But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman. Love 
is a madness, having heaven’s wisdom in it — a spark. But 
even when it is driving us on the breakers, call it love: 
and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and Victor had 
drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever 
the directions of the rational mind. 

Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the 
car with a racing charioteer. Or up beside a more than 
Titanically audacious balloonist. Eor the charioteer is 
bent on a goal; and Victor’s course was an ascension from 
heights to heights. He had ideas, he mastered Fortune. 


44 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


He conquered Nataly and held her subject, in being above 
his ambition; which was now but an occupation for his 
powers, while the aim of his life was at the giving and 
taking of simple enjoyment. In spite of his fits of unrea- 
sonableness in the means — and the woman loving him 
could trace them to a breadth of nature — his gentle good 
friendly innocent aim in life was of this very simplest; 
so wonderful, by contrast with his powers, chat she, 
assured of it as she was by experience of him, was touched, 
in a transfusion of her feelings through lucent globes of 
admiration and of tenderness, to reverence. There had 
been occasions when her wish for the whole world to have 
proof and exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and sim- 
plicity amid his gifts, prompted her incitement of him 
to stand forth eminently (“lead a kingdom,^’ was the 
phrase behind the curtain within her shy bosom); and it 
revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being still 
the Nataly who drank the cup with him, to join her fate 
with his. 

And why not ? Was that regretted ? Far from it. In 
her maturity, the woman was unable to send forth any 
dwelling thought or more than a flight of twilight fancy, 
that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith 
seemed to expunge near upon the half of her term of 
years. If it came to consideration of her family and the 
family’s opinion of her conduct, her judgement did not side 
with them or with herself, it whirled, swam to a giddiness 
and subsided. 

Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large 
country-house, they might as well have remained at Craye 
Farm or at Creckholt; both places dear to them in turn. 
Such was the plain sense of the surface question. And 
how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering 
sensitiveness on her behalf, could not see, that he threw 
her into situations where hard words of men and women 
threatened about her head; where one or two might on a 
day, some day, be heard ; and where, in the recollection of 
two years back, the word “ Impostor ” had smacked her on 
both cheeks from her own mouth. 

Now once more they were to run the same round of 
alarms, undergo the love of the place, with perpetual 


NATALY 


45 


apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms, throbbing 
suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted 
forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and 
unseeing we are seen, and unaware awaited. 

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her 
forehead ; she took strength from a handsome look of reso- 
lution in the glass. She could always honestly say, that 
her courage would not fail him. 

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, 
wearing his evening white flower over a more open white 
waistcoat; and she was composed and uninquiring. Their 
Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a rattle 
of Donizetti’s U segreto to the skylights. 

He performed his never-omitted lover’s homage. 

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. ‘‘A country- 
house ? We go and see it to-morrow ? ” 

And you ’ve been pining for a country home, my dear 
soul.” 

After the summer six weeks, the house in London does 
not seem a home to return to.” 

‘‘ And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for 
the first sketch of the furniture.” 

‘‘There is the Creckholt ...” she had a difficulty in 
saying. 

“ Part of it may do. Lakelands requires — but you will 
see to-morrow.” 

After a close shutting of her eyes, she rejoined : “ It is 
not a cottage ? ” 

“Well, dear, no: when the Slave of the Lamp takes to 
building, he does not run up cottages. And we did it 
without magic, all in a year; which is quite as good as a 
magical trick in a night.” He drew her close to him. 
“ When was it my dear girl guessed me at work ? ” 

“It was the other dear girl. Nesta is the guesser.” 

“You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; 
and I might have had to fib; and we neither of us like 
that.” He noticed a sidling of her look. “More than the 
circumstances oblige : — to be frank. But now we can 
speak of them. Wait — and the change comes ; and oppor- 
tunely, I have found. It ’s true we have waited long; my 
darling has had her worries. However, it ’s here at last. 


46 


Oira OF OT7R CONQUERORS 


Prepare yourself. I speak positively. You have to brace 
up for one sharp twitch — the ivomari^s poi^tion / as Natata 
says — and it ^s over.” He looked into her eyes for com- 
prehension; and not finding inquiry, resumed: ‘‘Just in 
time for the entry into Lakelands. With the pronounce- 
ment of the decree, we present the licence ... at an 
altar we ’ve stood before, in spirit . . . one of the ladies 
of your family to support you: — why not? Not even 
then ? ” 

“No, Victor; they have cast me off.” 

“Count on my cousins, the Duvidney ladies. Then we 
can say, that those two good old spinsters are less narrow 
than the Dreightons. I have to confess I rather think I 
was to blame for leaving Creckholt. Only, if I see my 
girl wounded, I hate the place that did the mischief. 
You and Fredi will clap hands for the country about 
Lakelands.” 

“ Have you heard from her ... of her ... is it any- 
thing, Victor?” Nataly asked him shyly; with not m.uch 
of hope, but some readiness to be inflated. The prospect 
of an entry into the big new house, among a new society, 
begirt by the old nightmares and fretting devils, drew her 
into staring daylight or furnace-light. 

He answered: “Mrs. Burman has definitely decided. 
In pity of us ? — to be free herself ? — who can say! She ^s 
a woman with a conscience — of a kind : slow, but it 
brings her to the point at last. You know her, know her 
well. Fenellan has it from her lawyer — her lawyer! a 
Mr. Carling; a thoroughly trustworthy man.” 

“Fenellan, as a reporter ?” 

“ Thoroughly to be trusted on serious matters. I under- 
stand that Mrs. Burman: — her health is awful: yes, yes; 
poor woman ! poor woman ! we feel for her : — she has come 
to perceive her duty to those she leaves behind. Con- 
sider: she has used the rod. She must be tired out — if 
human. And she is. One remembers traits.” 

Victor sketched one or two of the traits allusively to 
the hearer acquainted with them. They received strong 
colouring from midday’s Old Veuve in his blood. His 
voice and words had a swing of conviction : they imparted 
vinousness to a heart athirst. 


KATALY 


47 


The histrionic self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver 
of another, who is again, though not ignorant of his char- 
acter, tempted to swallow the nostrums which have made 
so gallant a man of him : his imperceptible sensible play- 
ing of the part, on a substratum of sincereness, induces 
fascinatingly to the like performance on our side, that we 
may be armed as he is for enjoying the coveted reality 
through the partial simulation of possessing it. And this 
is not a task to us when we have looked our actor in the 
face, and seen him bear the look, knowing that he is not 
intentionally untruthful; and when we incline to be capti- 
vated by his rare theatrical air of confidence; when it 
seems as an outside thought striking us, that he may not 
be altogether deceived in the present instance; when sud- 
denly an expectation of the thing desired is born and 
swims in a credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene : 
and when we are being kissed and the blood is warmed. 
In fine, here as everywhere along our history, when the 
sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become 
drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are 
women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it 
for themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adven- 
ture, credulity — the continued trust in the man — is the 
alternative of despair. 

“But, Victor, I must ask,” ISTataly said: “you have it 
through Simeon Benellan ; you have not yourself received 
the letter from her lawyer?” 

“My knowledge of what she would do near the grave: 
— poor soul, yes ! I shall soon be hearing.” 

“ You do not propose to enter this place until — until it 
is over ? ” 

“We enter this place, my love, without any sort of 
ceremony. We live there independently, and we can: we 
have quarters there for our friends. Our one neighbour is 
London — there! And at Lakelands we are able to enter- 
tain London and wife: — our friends, in short; with some, 
what we have to call, satellites. You inspect the house 
and grounds to-morrow — sure to be fair. Put aside all 
but the pleasant recollections of Craye and Creckholt. 
We start on a different footing. Really nothing can be 
simpler. Keeping your town-house, you are now and then 


48 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


ill residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your set, 
teach them to feel the charm of country life: we have 
everything about us; could have had our own milk and 
cream up to London the last two months. Was it very 
naughty ? — 1 should have exploded my surprise ! You will 
see, you will see to-morrow.’^ 

Nataly nodded, as required. “ Good nevrs from the 
mines ? ” she said. 

He answered : “ Dartrey is — yes, poor fellow ! — Dar- 
trey is confident, from the yield of stones, that the value 
of our claim counts in a number of millions. The same 
with the gold. But gold-mines are lodgeings, not homes.” 

“ Oh, Victor ! if money ! . . . But why did you say ^ poor 
fellow ^ of Dartrey Fenellan ? ” 

“You know how he ’s . . 

‘‘Yes, yes,” she said hastily. “But has that woman 
been causing fresh anxiety ? ” 

“And Natata’s chief hero on earth is not to be named a 
poor fellow,” said he, after a negative of the head on a 
subject they neither of them liked to touch. 

Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually 
a lucky fellow; and he would have mentioned the circum- 
stance confided to him by Simeon, but for a downright 
dread of renewing his painful fit of envy. He had also 
another, more distant, very faint idea, that it had better 
not be mentioned just yet, for a reason entirely undefined. 

He consulted his watch. The maid had come in for the 
robeing of her mistress. Nataly’s mind had turned to the 
little country cottage which would have given her such 
great happiness. She raised her eyes to him; she could 
not check their filling; they were like a river carrying 
moonlight on the smooth roll of a fall. 

He loved the eyes, disliked the water in them. With 
an impatient, “ There, there ! ” and a smart affectionate 
look, he retired, thinking in our old satirical vein of the 
hopeless endeavour to satisfy a woman’s mind without 
the intrusion of hard material statements, facts. Even the 
best of women, even the most beautiful, and in their 
moments of supremest beauty, have this gross ravenousness 
for facts. You must not expect to appease them unless 
you administer solids. It would almost appear that man 


THE lyiAN OF THE WOELD 


49 


is exclusively imaginative and poetical; and that his mate, 
the fair, the graceful, the bewitching, with the sweetest 
and purest of natures, cannot help being something of a 
groveller. 

Nataly had likewise her thoughts. 


CHAPTER VII 

BETWEEN A GENERAL MAN OF THE WORLD AND A 
PROFESSIONAL 

Rather earlier in the afternoon of that day, Simeon 
Fenellan, thinking of the many things which are nothing, 
and so melancholy for lack of amusements properly to 
follow Old Veuve, that he could ask himself whether he 
had not done a deed of night, to be blinking at his fellow- 
men like an owl all mad for the reveller’s hoots and flights 
and mice and moony roundels behind his hypocritical 
judex air of moping composure, chanced on Mr. Carling, 
the solicitor, where Lincoln’s Inn pumps lawyers into 
Fleet Street through the drain-pipe of Chancery Lane. 
He was in the state of the wine when a shake will rouse 
the sluggish sparkles to foam. Sight of Mrs. Burman’s 
legal adviser had instantly this effect upon him : his bub- 
bling friendliness for Victor Radnor, and the desire of the 
voice in his bosom for ears to hear, combined like the rush 
of two waves together, upon which he may be figured as 
the boat: he caught at Mr. Carling’s hand more heartily 
than their acquaintanceship quite sanctioned; but his 
grasp and his look of overflowing were immediately privi- 
leged; Mr. Carling, enjoying this anecdotal gentleman’s 
conversation as he did, liked the warmth, and was flat- 
tered during the squeeze with a prospect of his wife and 
friends partaking of the fun from time to time. 

was telling my wife yesterday your story of the lady 
contrabandist: I don’t think she has done laughing since,” 
Mr. Carling said. 

Fenellan fluted: ‘‘Ah?” He had scent, in the eulogy 
of a story grown flat as Election hats, of a good sort of 

4 


50 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


man in the way of men, a step or two behind the man of 
the world. He expressed profound regret at not having 
heard the silvery ring of the lady^s laughter. 

Carling genially conceived a real gratification to be con- 
ferred on his wife. “Perhaps you will some day honour 
us ? ’’ 

“You spread gold-leaf over the days to come, sir.” 

“N’ow, if I might name the day ? ” 

“You lump the gold and make it current coin; — says 
the blushing bride, who ought not to have delivered herself 
so boldly, but she had forgotten her bashful part and spoilt 
the scene, though, luckily for the damsel, her swain was a 
lover of nature, and finding her at full charge, he named 
the very next day of the year, and held her to it, like the 
complimentary tyrant he was.” 

“To-morrow, then ! ” said Carling intrepidly, on a dash 
of enthusiasm, through a haggard thought of his wife and 
the cook and the netting of friends at short notice. He 
urged his eagerness to ask whether he might indeed have 
the satisfaction of naming to-morrow. 

“With happiness,” Fenellan responded. 

Mrs. Carling was therefore in for it. 

“To-morrow, half-past seven: as for company to meet 
you, we will do what we can. You go Westward ? ” 

“To bed with the sun,” said the reveller. 

“ Perhaps by Covent Garden ? I must give orders there.” 

“Orders given in Covent Garden, paint a picture for 
bachelors of the domestic Paradise an angel must help 
them to enter! Ah, dear me! Is there anything on earth 
to compare with the pride of a virtuous life ? ” 

“T was married at four and twenty,” said Carling, as 
one taking up the expository second verse of a poem; 
plain facts, but weighty and necessary : “ my wife was in 
her twentieth year: we have five children; two sons, three 
daughters, one married, with a baby. So we are grand- 
father and mot^her, and have never regretted the first step, 
I may say for both of us.” 

“Think of it! Good luck and sagacity joined hands 
overhead on the day you proposed to the lady : and I M 
say, that all the credit is with her, but that it would 
seem to be at the expense of her sex.” 


THE MAN OF THE WORLD 


51 


‘‘She would be the last to wish it, I assure you.” 

“True of all good women! You encourage me, touching 
a matter of deep interest, not unknown to you. The lady’s 
warm heart will be with us. Probably she sees Mrs. 
Burman ? ” 

“Mrs. Burman Kadnor receives no one.” 

A comic severity in the tone of the correction was defer- 
entially accepted by-Penellan. 

“Pardon. She flies her flag, with her captain wanting; 
and she has, queerly, the right. So, then, the worthy dame 
who receives no one, might be treated, it struck us, con- 
versationally, as a respectable harbour-hulk, with more his- 
tory than top-honours. But she has the indubitable legal 
right to fly them — to proclaim it ; for it means little 
else.” 

“You would have her, if I follow you, divest herself of 
the name ? ” 

“Pin me to no significations, if 3"ou please, 0 shrewdest 
of the legal sort! I have wit enough to escape you there. 

( She is no doubt an estimable person.” 

“Well, she is; she is in her way a very good woman.” 

“Ah. You see, Mr. Carling, I cannot bring myself to 
rank her beside another lady, who has already claimed the 
title of me; and you will forgive me if I say, that your 
word ‘ good ’ has a look of being stuck upon the features 
we know of her, like a coquette’s naughty patch; or it ’s a 
jewel of an eye in an ebony idol: though I ’ve heard tell 
she performs her charities.” 

“I believe she gives away three parts of her income: 
and that is large.” 

“Leaving the good lady a fine fat fourth.” 

“Compare her with other wealthy people.” 

“ And does she outshine the majority still with her per- 
sonal attractions ? ” 

Carling was instigated by the praise he had bestowed on 
^ his wife to separate himself from a female pretender so 
ludicrous; he sought Fenellan’s nearest ear, emitting the 
: sound of “hum.” 

“In other respects, unimpeachable !” 

“Oh! quite!” 

“There was a fishfag of classic Billingsgate, who had 


52 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


broken her husband’s nose with a sledgehammer fist, and 
swore before the magistrate, that the man had n’t a crease 
to complain of in her character. We are condemned, Mr. 
Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the assur- 
ance we receive of the inviolability of those moral 
fortifications.” 

“ Character, yes, valuable — I do wish you had named 
to-night for doing me the honour of dining with me! ” said 
the lawyer impulsively, in a rapture of the appetite for 
anecdotes. “I have a ripe Pichon Longue ville, ’65.” 

‘‘A fine wine. Seductive to hear of. I dine with my 
friend Victor Radnor. And he knows wine. — There are 
good women in the world, Mr. Carling, whose charac- 
ters ...” 

^^Of course, of course there are; and I could name you 
some. We lawyers! . . .” 

“You encounter all sorts.” 

“Between ourselves,” Carling sank his tones to the in- 
discriminate, where it mingled with the roar of London. 

“You do ?” Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard 
enlightened liberal opinions regarding the sex. “Right!” 

“Many!” 

“I back you, Mr. Carling.” 

The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communica- 
tion, up to the verge of the clearly audible: he spoke of 
examples, experiences. Fenellan backed him further. 

“Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. 
Fenellan.” 

“Professional, but charitable; I am with you.” 

“Poor things! we — if we have to condemn — we owe 
them something.” 

“A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world 
against her! She does n’t hear it often.” 

“A real service,” Carling’s voice deepened to the legal 
“ without prejudice,” — “I am bound to say it — a service 
to Society.” 

“ Ah, poor wench ! And the kind of reward she gets ? ” 

“ We can hardly examine . . . mysterious dispensa- 
tions . . . here we are to make the best we can of it.” 

“ For the creature Society’s indebted to ? True. And 
am I to think there ’s a body of legal gentlemen to join 


THE IVIAN OF THE WORLD 


53 


with you, my friend, in founding an Institution to dis- 
tribute funds to preach charity over the country, and win 
compassion for her, as one of the principal persons of her 
time, that Society ’s indebted to for whatever it ’s indebted 
for ? ’’ 

“Scarcely that,” said Carling, contracting. 

“ But you ^re for great Eeforms ? ” 

“ Gradual.” 

“Then it ^s for Eeformatories, mayhap.” 

“They would hardly be a cure.” 

“You ’re in search of a cure ? ” 

“It would be a blessed discovery.” 

“But what ’s to become of Society ? ” 

“It ’s a puzzle to the cleverest.” 

“All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that 
Establishments must have their sacrifices. Beware of 
interfering: eh?” 

“By degrees, we may hope ...” 

“Society prudently shuns the topic; and so ’ll we. For 
we might tell of one another, in a fit of distraction, that 
t’ other one talked of it, and we should be banished for an 
offence against propriety. You should read my friend 
Durance’s Essay on Society. Lawyers are a buttress of 
Society. But, come : I wager they don’t know what they 
support until they read that Essay.” 

Carling had a pleasant sense of escape, in not being per- 
sonally asked to read the Essay, and not hearing that a 
copy of it should be forwarded to him. 

He said : Mr. Eadnor is a very old friend ? ” 

“Our fathers were friends; they served in the same 
regiment for years. I was in India when Victor Eadnor 
took the fatal ! ” 

“ Followed by a second, not less . . . ? ” 

“In the interpretation of a rigid morality arming you 
legal gentlemen to make it so ! ” 

“The Law must be vindicated.” 

“The law is a clumsy bludgeon.” 

“We think it the highest effort of human reason — the 
practical instrument.” 

“You may compare it to a rustic’s finger on a fiddle- 
string, for the murdered notes you get out of the practical 
instrument.” 


64 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


“I am bound to defend it, clumsy bludgeon or not.” 

“ You are one of the giants to wield it, and feel humanly, 
when, by chance, down it comes on the foot an inch olf 
the line. — Here ’s a peep of Old London; if the habit of 
old was not to wash windows. I like these old streets.” 

“Hum,” Carling hesitated. “I can remember when the 
dirt at the windows was appalling.” 

“Appealing to the same kind of stuff in the passing 
youngster’s green-scum eye: it was. And there your Law 
did good work. — You ’re for Bordeaux. What is your 
word on Burgundy ? ” 

“ Our Falernian! ” 

“Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom. But he 
will have the best of everything. A Romanee ! A 
IMusigny ! Sip, my friend, you embrace the Goddess of 
your choice above. You are up beside her at a sniff of 
that wine. — And lo, venerable Drury ! we duck through 
the court, reminded a bit by our feelings of our first love, 
who had n’t the cleanest of faces or nicest of manners, but 
-she takes her station in memory because we were boys 
then, and the golden halo of youth is upon her.” 

Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs 
he did not share. He said urgently: “Understand me; 
you speak of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe I have the great- 
est respect for Mr. Radnor’s abilities. He is one of our 
foremost men . . . proud of him. Mr. Radnor has genius; 
I have watched him; it is genius; he shows it in all he 
does; one of the memorable men of our time. I can 
admire him, independent of — well, misfortunes of that 
kind ... a mistaken early step. Misfortune, it is to be 
named. Between ourselves — we are men of the world — 
if one could see the way ! She occasionally ... as I 
have told you. I have ventured suggestions. As I have 
mentioned, I have received an impression ...” 

“But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady does n’t release him 
and will keep his name, she might stop her cowardly 
persecutions.” 

“ Can you trace them ? ” 

“ Undisguised! ” 

“ Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout. I should not exactly 
say revengeful. We have to discriminate. I gather, that 


THE MAN OF THE WOULD 


55 


her animus is, in all honesty, directed at the — I quote — 
state of sin. We are mixed, you know.” 

The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap. 
“But, fifty thousand times more mixed, she might any 
moment stop the state of sin, as she calls it, if it pleased 
her.” 

“ She might try. Our Judges look suspiciously on long- 
delayed actions. And there are, too, women who regard 
the marriage-tie as indissoluble. She has had to combat 
that scruple.” 

“Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead ! 
— well. But put a by- word to Mother Nature about the 
state of sin. Where, do you imagine, she would lay it ? 
You T1 say, that Nature and Law never agreed. They 
ought.” 

“The latter deferring to the former ? ” 

“ Moulding itself on her swelling proportions. My dear 
dear sir, the state of sin was the continuing to live in 
defiance of, in contempt of, in violation of, in the total 
degradation of. Nature.” 

“ He was under no enforcement to take the oath at the 
altar.” 

“He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, 
with pounds of barley-sugar in her pocket; — and she 
already serving as a test-vessel or mortar for awful com- 
binations in druggery! Gilt widows are equal to decrees 
of Fate to us young ones. Upon my word, the cleric who 
unites, and the Law that sanctions, they ’re the criminals. 
Victor Radnor is the noblest of fellows, the very best 
friend a man can have. I will tell you: he saved me, 
after I left the army, from living on the produce of my 
pen — which means, if there is to be any produce, the pros- 
trating of yourself to the level of the round middle of the 
public: saved me from that! Yes, Mr. Carling, I have 
trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and 
it is owing to Victor Radnor that I can order my thoughts 
as an individual man again before I blacken paper. Owing 
to him, I have a tenderness tor mercenaries; having been 
one of them and knowing how little we can help it. He 
is an Olympian — who thinks of them below. The lady 
also is an admirable woman at all points. The pair are a 


56 


OISTE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


mated couple, such as you won’t find in ten households over 
Christendom. Are you aware of the story ? ” 

Carling replied : A story under shadow of the Law has 
generally two very distinct versions.” 

“Hear mine. — And, by Jove ! a runaway cab. No, all 
right. But a crazy cab it is, and fit to do mischief in nar- 
row Drury. Except that it ’s sheer riff-raff here to knock 
over.” 

“Hulloa ? — come! ” quoth the wary lawyer. 

“There ’s the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me! One 
may be sure that the man for old Burgundy has it big and 
sound, in spite of his legal practices ; a dear good spherical 
fellow! Some day, we ’ll hope, you will be sitting with us 
over a magnum of Victor Radnor’s Bomanee Conti aged 
thirty-one: a wine, you’ll say at the second glass. High 
Priest for the celebration of the uncommon nuptials be- 
tween the body and the soul of man.” 

“You hit me rightly,” said Carling, tickled and touched; 
sensually excited by the bouquet of Victor Radnor’s hos- 
pitality and companionship, which added flavour to Fen- 
ellan’s compliments. These came home to him through 
his desire to be the “ good spherical fellow ; ” for he, like 
modern diplomatists in the track of their eminent Ber- 
linese New Type of the time, put on frankness as an 
armour over wariness, holding craft in reserve: his aim 
was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means 
to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his 
professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, 
however, was not somnolent, even when he said: “You 
know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the 
world to men of the world; and I have not lost by it. I 
am Mrs. Burman Radnor’s legal adviser: you are Mr. 
Victor Radnor’s friend. They are, as we see them, not on 
the best of terms. I would rather — at its lowest, as a 
matter of business — be known for having helped them to 
some kind of footing than send in a round bill to my client 
— or another. I gain more in the end. Frankl}^, I mean 
to prove, that it ’s a lawyer’s interest to be human.” 

“Because, now, see ! ” said Fenellan, “here ’s the case. 
Miss Natalia Dreighton, of a good Yorkshire family — a 
large one, reads an advertisement for the post of compan- 


THE MAX OB" THE WORLD 


57 


j ion to a lady, and answers it, and engages herself, previous 
i to the appearance of the young husband. Miss Dreighton 
; is one of the finest young women alive. She has a glori- 
1 ous contralto voice. Victor and she are encouraged by 
! Mrs. Burman to sing duets together. Well ? Why, Euclid 
would have theoremM it out for you at a glance at the trio. 
You have only to look on them, you chatter out your three 
Acts of a Drama without a stop. If Mrs. Burman cares 
I to practise charity, she has only to hold in her Fury- 
forked tongue, or her Jarniman I think ’s the name . . .’’ 

Carling shrugged. 

‘‘Let her keep from striking, if she ’s Christian,” pur- 
sued Fenellan, “and if kind let her resume the name of 
her first lord, who did a better thing for himself than for 
her, when he shook off his bars of bullion, to rise the 
lighter, and left a wretched female soul below, with the 
devil’s own testimony to her attractions — thousands in 
the Funds, houses in the City. She threw the young 
couple together. And my friend Victor Eadnor is of a 
particularly inflammable nature. Imagine one of us in 
such a situation, Mr. Carling!” 

“ Trying ! ” said the lawyer. 

“ The dear fellow was as nigh death as a man can be and 
know the sweetness of a woman’s call to him to live. — 
And here’s London’s garden of pines, bananas, oranges; 
all the droppings of the Hesperides here ! We don’t re- 
flect on it, Mr. Carling.” 

“Kot enough, not enough.” 

“I feel such a spout of platitudes that I could out with 
a Leading Article on a sheet of paper on your back while 
you ’re bending over the baskets. I seem to have got 
circularly round again to Eden when I enter a garden. 
Only, here we have to pay for the fruits we pluck. Well, 
and just the same there; and no end to the payment either. 
We ’re always paying ! By the way, Mrs. Victor Eadnor’s 
dinner-table ’s a spectacle. Her taste in flowers equals her 
lord ’s in wine. But age improves the wine and spoils the 
flowers, you ’ll say. Maybe you ’re for arguing that lovely 
women show us more of the flower than the grape, in 
relation to the course of time. I pray you not to forget 
the terrible intoxicant she is. We reconcile it, Mr. Car- 


58 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


ling, with the notion that the grape’s her spirit, the flower 
her body. Or is it the reverse ? Perhaps an intertwining. 
But look upon bouquets and clusters, and the idea of 
woman springs up at once, proving she ’s composed of 
them. I was about to remark, that Avith deference to the 
influence of Mrs. Burman’s legal adviser, an impenitent 
or penitent sinner’s pastor, the Reverend gentleman 
ministering to her spiritual needs, would presumptively 
exercise it, in this instance, in a superior degree.” 

Carling murmured : “The Rev. Groseman Buttermore; ” 
and did so for something of a cover, to continue a run of 
internal reflections : as, that he was assuredly listening to 
vinous talk in the streets by day; which impression placed 
him on a decorous platform above the amusing gentleman ; 
to whom, however, he grew cordial, in recognizing conse- 
quently, that his exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; 
and that an indication here and there of a trap in his talk, 
must have been due rather to excess of wariness, habitual 
in the mind of a long-headed man, whose incorrigibly 
impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a vigilant 
dexterity. 

“ Buttermore ! ” ejaculated Fenellan : “ Groseman Butter - 
more ! Mrs. Victor’s Father Confessor is the Rev. Septi- 
mus Barmby. Groseman Buttermore — Septimus Barmby. 
Is there anything in names ? Truly, unless these clerical 
gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads long 
after birth, the names would appear the active parts of 
them, and themselves mere marching supports, like the 
bearers of street placard-advertisements. Now, I know 
a Septimus Barmby, and you a Groseman Buttermore, 
and beyond the fact that Reverend starts up before their 
names without mention, I wager it ’s about all we do 
know of them. The}^ ’re Society’s trusty rock-limpets, 
no doubt.” 

“My respect for the cloth is extreme.” Carling’s short 
cough prepared the way for deductions. “Between our- 
selves, they are not men of the world.” 

Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose 
innermost imp burst out periodically, like a Dutch clock- 
sentry, to trot on his own small grounds for thinking him- 
self of the community of the man of the world. “You 


THE MAN OF THE ^YORLD 


59 


lawyers dress in another closet/’ he said. “The Eev. 
Groseman has the ear of the lady ? ” 

“ He has : — one ear.” 

“ Ah ? She has the other open for a man of the world, 
perhaps.” 

“Listens to him, listens to me, listens to Jarniman; and 
we neither of us guide her. She ’s very curious — a study. 
You think you know her — next day she has eluded you. 
She ’s emotional, she ’s hard ; she ’s a woman, she ’s a stone. 
Anything you like; but don’t i30unt on her. And another 
thing — I’m bound to say it of myself,” Carling claimed 
close hearing of Fenellan over a shelf of salad-stuff, “ no 
one who comes near her has any real weight with her in 
this matter.” 

“ Probably you mix cream in your salad of the vinegar 
and oil,” said Fenellan. “Try jelly of mutton.” 

“ You give me a new idea. Latterly, fond as I am of 
salads, I ’ve had rueful qualms. We T 1 try it.” 

“You should dine with Victor Eadnor.” 

“French cook, of course.” 

“Cordon bleu.” 

“I like to be sure of my cutlet.” 

“I like to be sure of a tastiness in my vegetables.^’ 

“ And good sauces ! ” 

“And pretty pastry. I said. Cordon bleu. The miracle 
is, it ’s a woman that Victor Radnor has trained: French, 
but a woman; devoted to him, as all who serve him are. 
Do I say ‘ but ’ a woman ? There 's not a Frenchman alive 
to match her. Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms 
extended : and may he wait long ! ” 

Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting 
a flutter of real envy be seen. “My wife would like to 
meet such a Frenchwoman. It must be a privilege to dine 
with him — to know him. I know what he has done for 
English Commerce, and to build a colossal fortune : genius, 
as I said: and his donations to Institutions. Odd, to read 
his name and Mrs. Burman Radnor’s at separate places in 
the lists ! Well, we ’ll hope. It ’s a case for a compromise 
of sentiments and claims.” 

“A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that 
there ’s always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we 
get rid of Lupus and Vulpus.” 


60 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and 
Vulpus; he saw none, and named the square of his resi- 
dence on the great Russell property, and the number of the 
house, the hour of dinner next day. He then hung silent, 
breaking the pause with his hand out and a sharp Well ? ” 
that rattled a whirligig sound in his head upward. His 
leave of people was taken in this laughing falsetto, as of 
one affected by the curious end things come to. 

Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he 
was a better than the common kind of lawyer; who doubt- 
less knew as much of the wrong side of the world as law- 
yers do, and held his knowledge for the being a man of 
the world: — as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the 
mind to mount for a look out over their own and the world’s 
pedestrian tracks. I could spot the lawyer in your compo- 
sition, my friend, to the exclusion of the man, he mused. 
But you ^re right in what you mean to say of yourself : 
you ’re a good fellow, for a lawyer, and together we may 
manage somehow to score a point of service to Victor 
Radnor. 


CHAPTER VIII 

SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS 

Nesta read her mother’s face when Mrs. Victor entered 
the drawing-room to receive the guests. She saw a smooth 
fair surface, of the kind as much required by her father’s 
eyes as innocuous air by his nostrils : and it was honest 
skin, not the deceptive feminine veiling, to make a dear 
man happy over his volcano. Mrs. Victor was to meet the 
friends with whom her feelings were at home, among 
whom her musical gifts gave her station : they liked her 
for herself; they helped her to feel at home with herself 
and be herself : a rarer condition with us all than is gen- 
erally supposed. So she could determine to be cheerful in 
the anticipation of an evening that would at least be rest- 
ful to the outworn sentinel nerve of her heart, which was 
perpetually alert and signalling to the great organ; often 


SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS 


61 


colouring the shows and seems of adverse things for an 
apeing of reality with too cruel a resemblance. One of 
the scraps of practical wisdom gained by hardened suffer- 
ers is, to keep from spying at horizons when they drop 
into a pleasant dingle. Such is the comfort of it, that we 
can dream, and lull our fears, and half think what we wish : 
and it is a heavenly truce with the fretful mind divided 
from our wishes. 

Nesta wondered at her mother's complacent questions 
concerning this Lakelands : the house, the county, the kind 
of people about, the features of the country. Physically 
unable herself to be regretful under a burden three parts 
enrapturing her, the girl expected her mother to display a 
shadowy vexation, with a proud word or two, that would 
summon her thrilling sympathy in regard to the fourth 
part : namely, the aristocratic iciness of country magnates , 
who took them up and cast them off; as they had done, 
she thought, at Craye Farm and at Creckholt: she remem- 
bered it, of the latter place, wincingly, insurgently, having 
loved the dear home she had been expelled from by the 
pride of the frosty surrounding people — or no, not all, 
but some of them. And what had roused their pride ? 

Striking for a reason, her inexperience of our modern 
England, supplemented by readings in the England of a 
preceding generation, had hit on her father's profession of 
merchant. It accounted to her for the behaviour of the 
haughty territorial and titled families. But certain of the 
minor titles headed City Firms, she had heard ; certain of 
the families were avowedly commercial. ^^They follow 
suit," her father said at Creckholt, after he had found her 
mother weeping, and decided instantly to quit and fly once 
more. But if they followed suit in such a way, then Mr. 
Durance must be right when he called the social English 
the most sheepy of sheep: — and Nesta could not consent 
to the cruel verdict, she adored her compatriots. Incon- 
gruities were pacified for her by the suggestion of her quick 
wits, that her father, besides being a merchant, was a suc- 
cessful speculator ; and perhaps the speculator is not liked 
by merchants; or they were jealous of him; or they did 
not like his being both. 

She pardoned them with some tenderness, on a suspicion 


62 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


that a quaint old high-frilled bleached and puckered Puri- 
tanical rectitude (her thoughts rose in pictures) possibly 
condemned the speculator as a description of gambler. ,An 
erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthu- 
siast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of 
them in the knowledge that her father had been, without 
the taint of gambling, a beneficent speculator. The Mont- 
gomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with the 
natives in India, and his Eailways in South America, his 
establishment of Insurance Offices, which were Savings 
Banks, and the Stores for the dispensing of sound goods to 
the poor, attested it. O and he was hospitable, the kindest, 
helpfullest of friends, the dearest, the very brightest of 
parents : he was his girl’s playmate. She could be critic of 
him, for an induction to the loving of him more justly : yet 
if he had an excessive desire to win the esteem of people, 
as these keen young optics perceived in him, he strove to 
deserve it: and no one could accuse him of laying stress on 
the benefits he conferred. Designedly, frigidly to wound a 
man so benevolent, appeared to her as an incomprehensible 
baseness. The dropping of acquaintanceship with him, 
after the taste of its privileges, she ascribed, in the void of 
any better elucidation, to a mania of aristocratic conceit. 
It drove her, despite her youthful contempt of politics, into 
a Eadicalism that could find food in the epigrams of Mr. 
Colney Durance, even when they passed her understanding ; 
or when he was not too distinctly seen by her to be shoot- 
ing at all the parties of her beloved England, beneath the 
wicked semblance of shielding each by turns. 

The young gentleman introduced to the Eadnor Concert- 
parties by Lady Grace Halley as the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, 
had to bear the sins of his class. Though he was tall, 
straight-featured, correct in costume, appearance, deport- 
ment, second son of a religious earl and no scandal to the 
parentage, he was less noticed by Xesta than the elderly 
and the commoners. Her father accused her of snubbing 
him. She reproduced her famous copy of the sugared acid 
of i\Ir. Dudley Sowerby’s closed mouth: a sort of sneer in 
meekness, as of humility under legitimate compulsion ; 
deploring Christianly a pride of race that stamped it for 
this cowled exhibition : the wonderful mimicry was a flash 


SOjVIE FA:vnLIAPv GUESTS 


63 


thrown out by a born mistress of the art, and her mother 
was constrained to laugh, and so was her father; but he 
wilfully denied the likeness. He charged her with encourag- 
ing Colney Durance to drag forth the sprig of nobility, in 
the nakedness of evicted shell-fish, on themes of the peril 
to England, possibly ruin, through the loss of that ruling 
initiative formerly possessed, in the days of our glory, by 
the titular nobles of the land. Colney spoke it effectively, 
and the Hon. Dudley’s expressive lineaments showed print 
of the heaving word Alas, as when a target is penetrated 
centrally. And he was not a particularly dull fellow for 
his class and country,” Colney admitted ; adding : I hit 
his thought and out he came.” One has, reluctantly with 
; Victor Radnor, to grant, that when a man’s topmost un- 
I spoken thought is hit, he must be sharp on his guard to 
I keep from coming out : — we have won a right to him. 

[ Only, it ’s too bad ; it 's a breach of hospitality,” Victor 
! said, both to Nesta and to Hataly, alluding to several 
instances of Colney’s ironic handling of their guests, espe- 
cially of this one, whom Nesta would attack, and Hataly 
would not defend. 

They were alive at a signal to protect the others. Miss 
Priscilla Graves, an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her 
; ant’alcoholic exclusiveness and scorn : Mr. Pempton, a 
I drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more trans- 
parent purity of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at 
globules : Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human creatures 
I treated as cattle by big doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby 
i satisfactorily smoked : Mr. Peri don traced mortal evil to 
I that act. Dr. Schlesien had his German views, Colney 
' Durance his ironic, Fenellan his fanciful and free-lance. 

I And here was an optimist, there a pessimist ; and the rank 
I Radical, the rigid Conservative, were not wanting. All of 
them were pointedly opposed, extraordinarily for so small an 
assembly : absurdly, ib might be thought : but these pro- 
voked a kind warm smile, with the exclamation : They are 
dears ! ” They were the dearer for their fads and foibles. 

Music harmonized them. IMusic, strangely, put the spell 
on Colney Durance, the sayer of bitter things, manufacturer 
of prickly balls, in the form of Discord’s apples : of whom 
Fenellan remarked, that he took to his music like an angry 


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OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


little boy to bis barley-sugar, with a growl and a grunt. 
All these diverse friends could meet and mix in Victor’s 
Concert-room with an easy homely recognition of one 
another’s musical qualities, at times enthusiastic ; and their 
natural divergencies and occasional clashes added a salient 
tastiness to the group: of whom Nesta could say: ^^Mama, 
was there ever such a collection of dear good souls with such 
contrary minds ? ” Her mother had the deepest of reasons 
for loving them, so as not to wish to see the slightest change 
in their minds, that the accustomed features making her 
nest of homeliness and real peace might be retained, with 
the humour of their funny silly antagonisms and the subse- 
quent march in concord ; excepting solely as regarded the 
perverseness of Priscilla Graves in her open contempt of 
Mr. Pempton’s innocent two or three wineglasses. The 
vegetarian gentleman’s politeness forbore to direct attention 
to the gobbets of meat Priscilla consumed, though he could 
express disapproval in general terms; but he entertained 
sentiments as warlike to the lady’s habit of drinking the 
blood of animals.” The mockery of it was, that Priscilla 
liked Mr. Pempton and admired his violoncello-playing, and 
he was unreserved in eulogy of her person and her pure 
soprano tones. Nataly was a poetic match-maker. Mr. 
Peridon was intended for Mademoiselle de Seilles, Nesta’s 
young French governess ; a lady of a courtly bearing, with 
placid speculation in the eyes she cast on a foreign people, 
and a voluble muteness shadowing at intervals along the line 
of her closed lips. 

The one person among them a little out of tune with most, 
was Lady Grace Halley. Nataly’s provincial gentlewoman’s 
traditions of the manners indicating conduct, reproved 
unwonted licences assumed by Lady Grace ; who, in allusion 
to Hymen’s weaving of a cousinship between the earldom of 
Southweare and that of Cantor, of which Mr. Sowerby 
sprang, set her mouth aud fan at work to delineate total 
distinctions, as it were from the egg to the empyrean. Her 
stature was rather short, all of it conversational, at the eye- 
brows, the shoulders, the finger-tips, the twisting shape ; a 
ballerina’s expressiveness ; and her tongue dashed half 
sentences through and among these hieroglyphs, loosely and 
funnily candid. Anybody might hear that she had gone 


SOME FAJMILIAE GUESTS 


65 


gambling into the City, and that she had got herself into a 
mess, and that by great good luck she had come across 
Victor Eadnor, who, with two turns of the wrist, had plucked 
her out of the mire, the miraculous man ! And she had 
vowed to him, never again to run doing the like without his 
approval. 

The cause of her having done it, was related with the 
accompaniments ; brows twitching, flitting smiles, shrugs, 
pouts, shifts of posture : she was married to a centaur ; out 
of the saddle a man of wood, ^^an excellent man/’ For the 
not colloquial do not commit themselves. But one wants 
a little animation in a husband. She called on bell-motion 
of the head to toll forth the utter nightcap negative. He 
had not any : out of the saddle, he was asleep : — next door 
to the Last Trump,” Colney Durance assisted her to describe 
the soundest of sleep in a husband, after wooing her to 
unbosom herself. She was awake to his guileful arts, and 
sailed along with him, hailing his phrases, if he shot a good 
one ; prankishly exposing a flexible nature, that took its 
holiday thus in a grinding world, among maskers, to the 
horrification of the prim. So to refresh ourselves, by having 
publicly a hip-bath in the truth while we shock our hearers 
enough to be discredited for what we reveal, was a dexterous 
merry twist, amusing to her ; but it was less a cynical malice 
than her nature that she indulged. A woman must have 
some excitement.” The most innocent appeared to her the 
Stock Exchange. The opinions of husbands who are not 
summoned to pay are hardly important ; they vary. 

Colney helped her now and then to step the trifle beyond 
her stride, but if he was humorous, she forgave ; and if to- 
gether they appalled the decorous, it was great gain. Her 
supple person, pretty lips, the style she had, gave a pass 
to the wondrous confidings, which were for masculine ears, 
whatever the sex. hlataly might share in them, but women 
did not lead her to expansiveness ; or not the women of the 
contracted class : Miss Graves, Mrs. Cormyn, and others at 
the Radnor Concerts. She had a special consideration for 
Mademoiselle de Seilles, owing to her exquisite French, as 
she said ; and she may have liked it, but it was the young 
Frenchwoman’s air of high breeding that won her esteem. 
Girls were Spring frosts to her. Fronting Hesta, she put on 

5 


66 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


her printed smile, or wood-cut of a smile, with its label of 
indulgence ; except when the girl sang. Music she loved. 
She said it was the saving of poor Dudley. It distinguished 
him in the group of the noble Evangelical Cantor Family; 
and it gave him a subject of assured discourse in company; 
and oddly, it contributed to his comelier air. Elute in hand, 
his mouth at the blow-stop was relieved of its pained 
updraw by the form for puffing; he preserved a gentlemanly 
high figure in his exercises on the instrument, out of ken of 
all likeness to the urgent insistency of Victor KadnoEs 
punctuating trunk of the puffing frame at almost every bar 
— an Apollo brilliancy in energetic pursuit of the nymph 
of sweet sound. Too methodical one, too fiery the other. 

In duets of Hauptmann’s, with Nesta at the piano, the 
contrast of dull smoothness and overstressed significance 
was very noticeable beside the fervent accuracy of her 
balanced fingering ; and as she could also flute, she could 
criticize ; though latterly the flute was boxed away from lips 
that had devoted themselves wholly to song : song being one 
of the damsel’s present pressing ambitions. She found 
nothing to correct in Mr. Sowerby, and her father was open 
to all the censures ; but her father could plead vitality, 
passion. He held his performances cheap after the ve- 
hement display ; he was a happy listener, whether to the 
babble of his ‘‘dear old Corelli,” or to the majesty of the 
rattling heavens and swaying forests of Beethoven. 

His air of listening was a thing to see ; it had a look of 
disembodiment; the sparkle conjured up from deeps, and the 
life in the sparkle, as of a soul at holiday. Eyes had been 
given this man to spy the pleasures and reveal the joy of 
his pasture on them : gateways to the sunny within, issues 
to all the outer Edens. Few of us possess that double 
significance of the pure sparkle. It captivated Lady 
Grace. She said a word of it to Fenellan : “ There is a man 
who can feel rapture ! ” He had not to follow the line of 
her sight: she said so on a previous evening, in a similar 
tone; and for a woman to repeat herself, using the very 
emphasis, was quaint. She could feel rapture ; but her 
features and limbs were in motion to designate it, between 
simply and wilfully; she had the instinct to be dimpling, 
and would not for a moment control it, and delighted in its 


SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS 


67 


effectiveness : only when observing that winged sparkle of 
eyes did an idea of envy, hardly a consciousness, inform 
her of being surpassed ; and it might be in the capacity to 
feel besides the gift to express. Such a reflection relating 
to a man, will make women mortally sensible that they are 
the feminine of him. 

‘^His girl has the look,^’ Fenellan said in answer. 

She cast a glance at ISTesta, then at isTataly. 

And it was true, that the figure of a mother, not pretend- 
ing to the father’s vividness, eclipsed it somewhat in their 
child. The mother gave richness of tones, hues and voice, 
and stature likewise, and the thick brown locks, which in 
her own were threads of gold along the brush from the 
temples : she gave the girl a certain degree of the composure 
of manner which Victor could not have bestowed ; she gave 
nothing to clash with his genial temper j she might be sup- 
posed to have given various qualities, moral if you like. 
But vividness was Lady’s Grace’s admirable meteor of the 
hour : she was unable to perceive, so as to compute, the 
value of obscurer lights. Under the charm of Nataly’s 
rich contralto during a duet with Priscilla Graves, she ges- 
ticulated ecstasies, and uttered them, and genuinely; and 
still, when reduced to meditations, they would have had no 
weight, they would hardly have seemed an apology for 
language, beside Victor’s gaze of pleasure in the noble 
forthroll of the notes. 

Nataly heard the invitation of the guests of the evening 
to Lakelands next day. 

Her anxieties were at once running about to gather pro- 
visions for the baskets. She spoke of them at night. But 
Victor had already put the matter in the hands of Madame 
Callet ; and all that could be done, would be done by 
Armandine, he knew. If she can’t muster enough at 
home, she ’ll be off to her Piccadilly shop by seven a. m. 
Count on plenty for twice the number.” 

Nataly was reposing on the thought that they were her 
friends, when Victor mentioned his having in the afternoon 
despatched a note to his relatives, the Duvidney ladies, 
inviting them to join him at the station to-morrow, for a 
visit of inspection to the house of his building on his new 
estate. He startled her. The Duvidney ladies were, to his 


68 


ONE OF OUE COKQIiEEOKS 


knowledge, of the order of the fragile minds which hold 
together by the cement of a common trepidation for the. 
support of "things established, and have it not in them to be 
able to recognize the unsanctioned. Good women, unworldly 
of the world, they were perforce harder than the world, from 
being narrower and more timorous. 

But, Victor, you were sure they would refuse ! ’’ 

He answered : They may have gone back to Tunbridge 
Wells. By the way, they have a society down there I want 
for Fredi. Sure, do you say, my dear ? Perfectly sure. 
But the accumulation of invitations and refusals in the end 
softens them, you will see. We shall and must have them 
for Fredi.^’ 

She was used to the long reaches of his forecasts, his 
burning activity on a project ; she found it idle to speak her 
thought, that his ingenuity would have been needless in a 
position dictated by plain prudence, and so much happier 
for them. 

They talked of Mrs. Burman until she had to lift a prayer 
to be saved from darker thoughts, dreadfully prolific, not to 
be faced. Part of her prayer was on behalf of Mrs. Burman, 
for life to be extended to her, if the poor lady clung to life — 
if it was really humane to wish it for her : and heaven would 
know : heaven had mercy on the affiicted. 

Nataly heard the snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer. She 
had to cease to pray. 


CHAPTER IX 

AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 

One may not have an intention to flourish, and may be 
pardoned for a semblance of it, in exclaiming, somewhat 
royally, as creator and owner of the place : There you see 
Lakelands.^’ 

The conveyances from the railway station drew up on 
a rise of road fronting an undulation, where our modern 
English architect’s fantasia in crimson brick swept from 


AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 


69 


central gables to flying wings, over pents, crooks, curves, 
peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections, away 
to a red village of stables and dependent cottages ; harmo- 
nious in irregularity ; and coloured homely with the green- 
sward about it, the pines beside it, the clouds above it. Not 
many palaces would be reckoned as larger. The folds and 
swells and stream of the building along the roll of ground, 
had an appearance of an enormous banner on the wind. 
Nataly looked. Her next look was at Colney Durance. 
She sent the expected nods to Victor’s carriage. She would 
have given the whole prospect for the covering solitariness 
of her chamber. A multitude of clashing sensations, and 
a throat-thickening hateful to her, compelled her to summon 
so as to force herself to feel a groundless anger, directed 
against none, against nothing, perfectly crazy, but her only re- 
source for keeping down the great wave surgent at her eyes. 

Victor was like a swimmer in morning sea amid the 
exclamations encircling him. He led through the straight 
passage of the galleried hall, offering two fair landscapes 
at front door and at back, down to the lake, Fredi’s lake ; a 
good oblong of water, notable in a district not abounding 
in the commodity. He would have it a feature of the 
district ; and it had been deepened and extended ; up rose 
the springs, many ran the ducts. Fredi’s pretty little bath- 
shed or bower had a space of marble on the three-feet shal- 
low it overhung with a shade of carved woodwork ; it had 
a diving-board for an eight-feet plunge ; a punt and small 
row-boat of elegant build hard by. Green ran the banks 
about, and a beechwood fringed with birches curtained the 
Northward length : morning sun and evening had a fair 
face of water to paint. Saw man ever the like for pleasing 
a poetical damsel ? So was Miss Fredi, the coldest of the 
party hitherto, and dreaming a preference of old places’’ 
like Creckholt and Craye Farm, ^‘captured to be enraptured,” 
quite according to man’s ideal of his beneficence to the sex. 
She pressed the hand of her young French governess Louise 
de Seilles. As in everything he did for his girl, Victor 
pointed boastfully to his forethought of her convenience 
tnd her tastes : the pine-panels of the interior, the shelves 
for her books, pegs to hang her favourite drawings, and 
the couch-bunk under a window to conceal the summerly 


i 


70 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


recliner while throwing full light on her book; and the i 
hearth-square for logs, when she wanted fire because Fredi 
bathed in any weather : the oaken towel-coffer ; the wood- > 
carvings of doves, tits, fishes; the rod for the flowered 
silken hangings she was to choose, and have shy odalisque 
peeps of sunny water from her couch. 

Fredi’s Naiad retreat, when she wishes to escape Herr 
Strauscher or Signor Ruderi,’’ said Victor, having his grate- 
ful girl warm in an arm ; and if they head after her into 
the water, I back her to leave them puffing ; she ’s a dolphin. 
That water has three springs and gets all the drainings of 
the upland round us. I chose the place chiefly on account 
of it and the pines. I do love pines ! ’’ 

But, excellent man ! what do you not love? ’’ said Lady 
Grace, with the timely hit upon the obvious, which rings. 

It saves him from accumulation of tissue,’’ said Colney. 
What does ? ” was eagerly asked by the wife of the 
homoeopathic Dr. John Cormyn, a sentimental lady beset 
with fears of stoutness. 

Victor cried : Tush ; don’t listen to Colney, pray.” 

But she heard Colney speak of a positive remedy, more 
immediately effective than an abjuration of potatoes and 
sugar. She was obliged by her malady to listen, although 
detesting the irreverent ruthless man, who could direct 
expanding frames, in a serious tone, to love; love every- 
body, everything ; violently and universally love ; and so 
without intermission pay out the fat created by a rapid 
assimilation of nutriment. Obeseness is the most sensitive 
of our ailments : probably as being aware, that its legiti- 
mate appeal to pathos is ever smothered in its pudding-bed 
of the grotesque. She was pained, and showed it, and was 
ashamed of herself for showing it; and that very nearly 
fetched the tear. 

“ Our host is an instance in proof,” Colney said. He 
waved hand at the house. His meaning was hidden ; evi- 
dently he wanted victims. Sight of Lakelands had gripped 
him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion to sting 
and tear, on rational grounds. His face meanwhile, which 
had points of the handsome, signifled a smile asleep, as if 
beneath a cloth. Only those who knew him well were 
aware of the claw-like alertness under the droop of eyelids. 


{ 


AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 


71 


Admiration was the common note, in the various keys. 
The station selected for the South-eastward aspect of the 
dark-red gabled pile on its white shell-terrace, backed by a 
plantation of tall pines, a mounded and ‘full-plumed com- 
pany, above the left wing, was admired, in files and in vol- 
leys. Marvellous, effectively miraculous, was the tale of 
the vow to have the great edifice finished within one year : 
and the strike of workmen, and the friendly colloquy with 
them, the good reasoning, the unanimous return to duty ; 
and the doubling, the trebling of the number of them; and 
the most glorious of sights — the grand old English work- 
ing with a will ! as Englishmen do when they come at last 
to heat ; and they conquer, there is then nothing that they 
cannot conquer. So the conqueror said. — And admirable 
were the conservatories running three long lines, one from 
the drawing-room, to a central dome for tropical growths. 
And the parterres were admired; also the newly-planted 
Irish junipers bounding the West-walk; and the three tiers 
of stately descent from the three green terrace banks to the 
grassy slopes over the lake. Again the lake was admired, 
the house admired. Admiration was evoked for great 
orchid-houses over yonder,’’ soon to be set up. 

Off we go to the kitchen-garden. There the admiration 
is genial, practical. We admire the extent of the beds 
marked out for asparagus, and the French disposition of 
the planting at wide intervals ; and the French system 
of training peach, pear, and plum trees on the walls to 
win length and catch sun, we much admire. We admire 
the gardener. We are induced temporarily to admire the 
French people. They are sagacious in fruit-gardens. They 
have not the English Constitution, you think rightly; but 
in fruit-gardens they grow for fruit, and not, as Victor quotes 
a friend, for wood, which the valiant English achieve. We 
hear and we see examples of sagacity ; and we are further 
brought round to the old confession, that we cannot cook ; 
Colney Durance has us there ; we have not studied herbs 
and savours ; and so we are shocked backward step by step 
until we retreat precipitately into the nooks where waxen 
tapers, carefully tended by writers on the Press, light-up 
mysterious images of our national selves for admiration. 
Something surely we do, or we should not be where we are. 


72 


OISTE OF OUB CONQUEROBS 


But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course) which 
others cannot do? Colney asks; and he excludes cricket 
and football. 

An acutely satiric man in an English circle, that does not 
resort to the fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate the 
excessive fury roused in his mind by an illogical people of 
a provocative prosperity, mainly tongueless or of leaden 
tongue above the pressure of their necessities, as he takes 
them to be. They give him so many opportunities. They 
are angry and helpless as the log hissing to the saw. Their 
instinct to make use of the downright in retort, restrained 
as it is by a buttoned coat of civilization, is amusing, in- 
viting. Colney Durance allured them to the quag’s edge and 
plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically ; and although it 
may be said, that they felt their situation less than did he 
the venom they sprang in his blood, he was cruel ; he 
caused discomfort. But these good friends about him stood 
for the country, an illogical country ; and as he could not 
well attack his host Victor Eadnor, an irrational man, he 
selected the abstract entity for the discharge of his honest 
spite. 

The irrational friend was deeper at the source of his 
irritation than the illogical old motherland. This house of 
Lakelands, the senselessness of his friend in building it and 
designing to live in it, after experiences of an incapacity to 
stand in a serene contention with the world he challenged, 
excited Colney’s wasp. He was punished, half way to 
frenzy behind his placable demeanour, by having Dr. Schle- 
sien for chorus. And here again, it was the unbefitting, not 
the person, which stirred his wrath. A German on English 
soil should remember the dues of a guest. At the same 
time, Colney said things to snare the acclamation of an 
observant gentleman of that race, who is no longer in his 
first enthusiasm for English beef and the complexion of 
the women. Ah, ya, it is true, what you say : ^ The English 
grow as fast as odders, but they grow to horns instead of 
brains.* They are Bull. Quaat true.^’ He bellowed on a 
laugh the last half of the quotation. 

Colney marked him. His encounters with Fenellan were 
enlivening engagements and left no malice ; only a regret, 
when the fencing passed his guard, that Fenellan should 


AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 


73 


prefer to flash for the nnnute. He would have met a pert 
defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla Graves, 
if she had not been occupied with observation of the bearing 
of Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Kadiior ; which 
displeased her on behalf of Mrs. Victor ; she was besides 
hostile by race and class to an aristocratic assumption of 
licence. Sparing Colney, she with some scorn condemned 
Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed with- 
out a word. Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian 
movement was more progressive in England than in other 
lands, but he was at the disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, 
that eulogy of his compatriots on this account would win 
her coldest approval. ‘‘ Satire was never an argument,’^ he 
said, too evasively. 

The Rev. Septimus Barmby received the meed of her 
smile, for saying in his many-fathom bass, with an eye on 
Victor : At least we ma}^ boast of breeding men, who are 
leaders of men.’’ 

The announcement of luncheon, by Victor’s butler Arling- 
ton, opportunely followed and freighted the remark with a 
happy recognition of that which comes to us from the hands 
of conquerors. Dr. Schlesien himself, no antagonist to 
England, but like Colney Durance, a critic, speculated in 
view of the spread of pic-nic provision beneath the great glass 
dome, as to whether it might be, that these English were on 
another start out of the dust in vigorous commercial enter- 
prise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly minds 
— merchant, in this instance: and he debated within, 
whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising 
superior manner by these haphazard English, may not some- 
times wrest the prize from Method ; albeit we count for the 
long run, that Method has assurance of success, however 
late in the race to set forth. 

Luncheon was a merry meal, with Victor and Hataly for 
host and hostess; Eenellan, Colney Durance, and Lady 
Grace Halley for the talkers. A gusty bosom of sleet 
overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling Westward, 
became a radiant mountain-land, partly worthy of Victor’s 
phrase: ‘‘A range of Swiss Alps in air.” 

‘AVith periwigs Louis Quatorze for peaks,” Colney 
added. 


74 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


And Fenellan improved on him : Or a magnified Bench 
' of Judges at the trial of your cserulean PhryneJ* 

The strip of white cloud flew on a whirl from the blue, 
to confirm it. 

But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits 
upon nature. Violent and horrid interventions of the 
counterfeit, such mad similes appeared to them, when pure 
coin was offered. They loathed the Eev. Septimus Barmby 
for proclaiming, that he had seen ‘‘Chapters of Hebrew 
History in the grouping of clouds.” 

His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Hesta. The 
clerical gentleman’s voice was of a depth to claim for it 
the profoundest which can be thought or uttered; and 
Nesta’s tender youth had taken so strong an impression of 
sacredness from what Fenellan called “his chafer tones,” 
that her looks were often given him in gratitude, for the 
mere sound. Nataly also had her sense of safety in acqui- 
escing to such a voice coming from such a garb. Conse- 
quently, whenever Fenellan and Colney were at him, 
drawing him this way and that for utterances cathedral 
in sentiment and sonorousness, these ladies shed protecting 
beams; insomuch that he was inspired to the agreeable 
conceptions whereof frequently rash projects are an issue. 

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were prin- 
cipally enriched merchants, it appeared ; a snippet or two 
of the fringe of aristocracy lay here and there among them; 
and one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thanes, having the 
manners proper to last century’s yeoman. Mr. Pempton 
knew something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, 
Beaves Urmsing by name; a ruddy man, right heartily 
Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of the Hep- 
tarchy hearthstone ; who had a song. The Marigolds^ which 
he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To 
have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the 
venerable rotundity of the country, was rare. Victor 
exclaimed “ Come ! ” in ravishment over the picturesqueness 
of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts of 
England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her counte- 
nance was inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, and 
said : “ I have met two or three of them in the train : agree- 
able men : Gladding, the banker ; a General Fanning ; that 


INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 


75 


man Blathenoy, great bill-broker. But the fact is, close 
on London, we h^e independent of neighbours; we mean to 
be. Lakelands and London practically join.^’ 

“The mother city becoming the suburb,’’ murmured 
Colney, in report of the union. 

“You must expect to be invaded, sir,” said Mr. Sow- 
erby; and Victor shrugged: “We are pretty safe.” 

“ The lock of a door seems a potent security until some 
one outside is heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,” 
Fenellan threw out his airy nothing of a remark. 

It struck on Nataly’s heart. “ So you will not let us be 
lonely here,” she said to her guests. 

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congre- 
gations. Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at the 
orifice, informed her of their “very deep happiness in the 
privilege.” 

He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully. 

“Don’t imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shutoff* 
from neighbours, in a house like this; and they have a 
claim,” said Lady Grace, quitting the table. 

Fenellan and Colney thought so : 

“Like mice at a cupboard.” 

“Beetles in a kitchen.” 

“ No, no — no, no ! ” Victor shook head, pitiful over the 
good people likened to things unclean, and royally uprais- 
ing them : in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden 
incubi they had been upon his flatter moods of late. “No, 
but it ’s a rapture to breathe the air here ! ” His lifted 
chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly 
to soar beside him. 

She summoned her smile and nodded. 

He spoke aside to Lady Grace: “The dear soul wants 
time to compose herself after a grand surprise.” 

She replied: “I think I could soon be reconciled. How 
much land ? ” 

“In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres 
... in all at present three hundred and seventy, includ- 
ing plantations, lake, outhouses.” 

“Large enough; land pa^dng as it does — that is, not 
paying. We shall be having to gamble in the City syste- 
matically for subsistence,” 


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ONE OF OUE. CONQUERORS 


‘‘You will not so much as jest on the subject.’^ 

Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. 
The lady played it off in a shadowy pout and shrug while 
taking a stamp of his masterfulness, not so volatile. 

She said to Nataly: “Our place in Worcestershire is 
about half the size, if as much. Large enough when 
we ^re not crowded out with gout and can open to no one. 
Some day you will visit us, I hope.” 

“You we count on here, Lady Grace.” 

It was an over-accentuated response; unusual with this 
well-bred woman ; and a bit of speech that does not flow, 
causes us to speculate. The lady resumed : “ I value the 
favour. We ’re in a horsey-doggy- foxy circle down there. 
We want enlivening. If we had your set of musicians 
and talkers ! ” 

Nataly smiled in vacuous kindness, at a loss for the 
retort of a compliment to a person she measured. Lady 
Grace also was an amiable hostile reviewer. Each could 
see, to have cited in the other, defects common to the 
lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal 
quality or two; which might be pleaded in extenuation; 
and if the apology proved too effective, could be dispersed 
by insistance upon it, under an implied appeal to benevo- 
lence. When we have not a liking for the creature whom 
we have no plain cause to dislike, we are minutely just. 

During the admiratory stroll along the ground-floor 
rooms, Colney Durance found himself beside Dr. Schlesien; 
the latter smoking, striding, emphasizing, but bearable, 
as the one of the party who was not perpetually at the 
gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: “No doubt: 
the German is the race the least mixed in Europe: it 
might challenge aboriginals for that. Oddly, it has in- 
vented the Cyclopaedia for knowledge, the sausage for 
nutrition ! How would you explain it ? ” 

Dr. Schlesien replied with an Atlas shrug under fleabite 
to the insensately infantile interrogation. 

He in turn was presently heard. 

“But, my good sir! you quote me your English Latin. 

I must beg of you you write it down. It is orally 
incomprehensible to Continentals.” 

“We are Islanders!” Colney shrugged in languishment. 


AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS 


77 


^^Oh, you do great things . . Dr. Schlesien rejoined 
in kindness, making his voice a musical intimation of the 
smallness of the things. 

“We build great houses, to employ our bricks.^^ 

“No, Colney, to live in,’’ said Victor. 

“Scarcely long enough to warm them.’" 

“ What do you . . . fiddle ! ” 

“ They are not Hohenzollerns ! ” 

“It is true,” Dr. Schlesien called. “No, but you learn 
discipline; you build. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns 
you build ! But you shall look above : Eyes up. Ire 
necesse est. Good, but mount; you come to something. 
Have ideas.” 

“ Good, but when do we reach your level ? ” 

“Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want in- 
struction from foreigners.” 

“Pupil to paedagogue indeed. You have the wreath in 
Music, in Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, 
Arms, Manners.” 

Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode. 

“He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block,” Colney 
said, falling back to Eenellan. 

Fenellan observed: “You might have credited him with 
the finished sculpture.” 

“They ’re ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.” 

“They ’ve a widening of their swallow since Versailles.” 

“ Manners ? ” 

“Well, that ’s a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! 
But he ’s off by himself to loosen it.” 

Victor came on the couple testily. “ What are you two 
concocting! I say, do keep the peace, please. An excel- 
lent good fellow; better up in politics than any man I 
know; understands music; means well, you can see. You 
two hate a man at all serious. And he doesn’t bore with 
his knowledge. A scholar too.” 

“If he T1 bring us the atmosphere of the groves of 
Academe, he may swing his ferule pickled in himself, 
and welcome,” said Eenellan. 

“Yes!” Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in 
Eenellan; “but Colney ’s always lifting the Germans high 
above us.” 


78 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


’s to exercise his muscles.” 

Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the 
Kev. Septimus and young Sowerby, Old England herself, 
were spared by the diversion of these light skirmishing 
shots from their accustomed victims to the masculine 
people of our time. His friends would want a drilling to 
be of aid to him in his campaign to come. Eor it was one, 
and a great one. He remembered his complete perception 
of the plan, all the elements of it, the forward whirling of 
it, just before the fall on London Bridge. The greatness 
of his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest 
of obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as antici- 
pated, Colney and Eenellan were sultry flies for whomso- 
ever they could fret, he was blind to the reading of absur- 
dities which caused Eredi’s eyes to stream and Lady Grace 
beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young 
Sowerby appeared forgiving enough — he was a perfect 
gentleman: but Eredi’s appalling sense of fun must try 
him hard. And those young fellows are often more 
wounded by a girBs thoughtless laughter than by a man’s 
contempt. Nataly should have protected him. Her face 
had the air of a smiling general satisfaction; sign of a 
pleasure below the mark required; sign too of a sleepy 
partner for a battle. Even in the wonderful kitchen, 
arched and pillared (where the explanation came to Nesta 
of Madame Callet’s frequent leave of absence of late, when 
an inferior dinner troubled her father in no degree), even 
there his Nataly listened to the transports of the guests 
with benign indulgence. 

^^Mama! ” said Nesta, ready to be entranced by kitchens 
in her bubbling animation: she meant the recalling of 
instances of the conspirator her father had been. 

‘‘You none of you guessed Armandine’s business! ” Vic- 
tor cried, in a glee that pushed to make the utmost of this 
matter and count against chagrin. “She was off to Paris; 
went to test the last inventions: — French brains are 
always alert: — and in fact, those kitchen-ranges, gas and 
coal, and the apparatus for warming plates and dishes, 
the whole of the battery is on the model of the Due 
d’Ariane’s — finest in Europe. Well,” he agreed with 
Colney, “to say France is enough.” 


AN INSPECTION OP LAICELANDS 


79 


Mr. Pempton spoke to Miss Graves of the task for a 
woman to conduct a command so extensive. And, as when 
an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced to set foot near a 
wasp’s nest, out on him came woman and her champions, 
the worthy and the sham, like a blast of powder. 

Victor ejaculated: Armandine! ” Whoever doubted 
her capacity, knew not Armandine; or not knowing Arman- 
dine, knew not the capacity in women. 

With that utterance of her name, he saw the orangey 
spot on London Bridge, and the sinking Tower and masts 
and funnels, and the rising of them, on his return to his 
legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of the fall he 
had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her 
part : Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she below : and 
hospitality was to do its part, and music was impressed 
— the innocent Concerts ; his wealth, all his inventiveness 
were to serve ; — and merely to attract and win the tastes 
of people , for a social support to Lakelands ! Merely 
that ? Much more : — if ISTataly’s coldness to the place 
would but allow him to form an estimate of how much. 
At the same time, being in the grasp of his present disap- 
pointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was 
astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously 
felt imagination starving at the vision of success. Victor 
had yet to learn, that the man with a material object in 
aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer to his mark, 
often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the 
arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for 
scheming: and success is costly; we find we have pledged 
the better half of ourselves to clutch it; not to be redeemed 
with the whole handful of our prize ! He was, however, 
learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly’s defective 
sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she 
depressed. A shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge 
seemed to cross him from the close flapping of a wing 
within reach. He could say only, that it would, if caught, 
have been an answer to the thought disturbing him. 

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside 
her, on the descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove 
in sight, coming swift as the point of an outrigger over 
the flood. 


80 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


CHAPTEE X 

SKEPSEY IN MOTION 

The bearer of his master’s midday letters from London 
shot beyond Nataly as soon as seen, with an apparent snap 
of his body in passing. He steamed to the end of the ^ 
terrace and delivered the packet, returning at the same 
rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much 
respected. He had left the railway-station on foot instead 
of taking a fly, because of a calculation that he would save 
three minutes; which he had not lost for having to come ^ 
through the raincloud. Perhaps the contrary,” Skepsey 
said; it might be judged to have accelerated his course: 
and his hat dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his 
hands, cheerful as an ouzel-cock when the sun is out again. 

‘‘Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?” 
Colney inquired of him. And Skepsey answered with pre- 
cision of statement: “Crowns, no, sir; the nose, it may ; 
happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule.” 

“You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific 
Pugilism offers us compensation for the broken bridge of 
a nose ? ” 

“In an increase of manly self-esteem: I do, sir, yes.” 

Skepsey was shy of this gentleman’s bite ; and he fancied 
his defence had been correct. Perceiving a crumple of the 
lips of Mr. Durance, he took the attitude of a watchful 
dubiety. 

“ But, my goodness, you are wet through ! ” cried Nataly, 
reproaching herself for the tardy compassion ; and Nesta 
ran up to them and heaped a thousand pities on her “poor 
dear Skip,” and drove him in beneath the glass-dome to 
the fragments of pic-nic, and poured champagne for him, 
“lest his wife should have to doctor him for a cold,” and 
poured afresh, when he had obeyed her, “for the toasting 
of Lakelands, dear Skepsey!” impossible to resist: so he 
drank, and blinked; and was then told, that before using ■ 
his knife and fork he must betake himself to some fire of : 
shavings and chips, where coffee was being made, for the i 


SKEPSEY IN MOTION 


81 


purpose of drying his clothes. But this he would not hear 
of: he was pledged to business, to convey his master’s 
letters, and he might have to catch a train by the last 
quarter-minute, unless it was behind the time-tables; he 
must hold himself ready to start. Entreated, adjured, 
commanded, Skepsey commiseratingly observed to Colney 
Durance, “The ladies do not understand, sir! ” Eor Turk 
of Constantinople had never a more haremed opinion of the 
untitness of women in the brave world of action. The 
persistence of these ladies endeavouring to obstruct him 
in the course of his duty, must have succeeded save that 
for one word of theirs he had two, and twice the prompti- 
tude of motion. He explained to them, as to good chil- 
dren, that the loss of five minutes might be the loss of a 
Post, the loss of thousands of pounds, the loss of the 
character of a Firm; and he was away to the terrace, 
j^esta headed him and waved him back. She and her 
mother rebuked him: they called him unreasonable; 
wherein they resembled the chief example of the sex to 
him, in a wife he had at home, who levelled that charge 
against her husband when most she needed discipline : — 
the woman laid hand on the very word legitimately his 
own for the justification of his process with her. 

“But, Skips! if you are ill and we have to nurse you ! ” 
said Nesta. 

She forgot the hospital, he told her cordially, and 
laughed at the notion of a ducking producing a cold or a 
cold a fever, or anything consumption, with him. So the 
ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and allow him 
to stand in wet clothing to eat his cold pie and salad. 

Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a wit- 
ness that they were seductresses for inducing him to drink 
wine — and a sparkling wine. 

“It is to warm him,” they pleaded, and she said: “He 
must be warm from his walk; ” and they said: “But he is 
wet;” and said she, without a show of feeling: “Warm 
water, then; ” and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp of 
anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or 
humane consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of the 
possible proselyte in him; she remarked encouragingly: “I 
am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural taste.” 

6 


82 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in 
his hand, and he was fully a\t-are of her high -principled 
aversion; and he profoundly bowed to principles, believ- 
ing his England to be pillared on them; and the lady 
looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and 
if we slap and pinch and starve our appetites, the idea of 
a principle seems entering us to support. Subscribing to 
a principle, our energies are refreshed ; we have a faith in 
the country that was not with us before the act; and of a 
real well-founded faith come the glowing thoughts which 
we have at times: thoughts of England heading the 
nations; when the smell of an English lane under showers 
challenges Eden, and the threading of a London crowd 
tunes discords to the swell of a cathedral organ. It may 
be, that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, 
a man will stand clearer-headed to serve his country. He 
may expect to have a clearer memory, for certain: he will 
not be asking himself, unable to decide, whether his mas- 
ter named a Mr, Journeyman or a Mr, Jarninian, as the 
person he declined to receive. Either of the two is re- 
pulsed upon his application, owing to the guilty similarity 
of sounds: but what we are to think of is, our own sad 
state of inefficiency in failing to remember; which accuses 
our physical condition, therefore our habits. — Thus the 
little man debated, scarcely requiring more than to hear 
the right word, to be a convert and make him a garland of 
the proselyte’s fetters. 

Destructively for the cause she advocated. Miss Priscilla 
gestured the putting forth of an abjuring hand, with the 
recommendation to him, so to put aside temptation that 
instant; and she signified in a very ugly jerk of her fea- 
tures, the vilely filthy stuff Morality thought it, however 
pleasing it might be to a palate corrupted by indulgence of 
the sensual appetites. 

But the glass had been handed to him by the lady he 
respected, who looked angelical in offering it, divinely 
other than ugly; and to her he could not be discourteous; 
not even to pay his homage to the representative of a 
principle. He bowed to Miss Graves, and drank, and 
rushed forth; hearing shouts behind him. 

His master had a packet of papers ready, easy for the 
pocket. 


SKEPSEY IN MOTION 


83 


the way, Skepsey,’’ he said, “if a man named Jar- 
niman should call at the office, I will see him/’ 

Skepsey’s grey eyes came out. 

— Or was it Journeyman^ that his master would not see; 
and Jarniman that he would ? 

His habit of obedience, pride of apprehension, and the 
time to catch the train, forbade inquiry.’ Besides he knew 
of himself of old, that his puzzles were best unriddled 
running. 

The quick of pace are soon in the quick of thoughts. 

Jarniman, then, was a man whom his master, not want- 
ing to see, one day, and wanting to see, on another day, 
might wish to conciliate: a case of policy. Let Jarniman 
go. Journeyman, on the other hand, was nobody at all, 
a ghost of the fanc}^. Yet this Journeyman was as impor- 
tant an individual, he was a dread reality; more important 
to Skepsey in the light of patriot : and only in that light 
was he permitted of a scrupulous conscience and modest 
mind to think upon himself when the immediate subject 
was his master’s interests. For this Journeyman had 
not an excuse for existence in Mr. Radnor’s pronuncia- 
tion: he was born of the buzz of a troubled ear, coming of 
a disordered brain, consequent necessarily upon a dis- 
orderly stomach, that might protest a degree of com- 
parative innocence, but would be shamed utterly under 
inspection of the eye of a lady of principle. 

What, then, was the value to his country of a servant 
who could not accurately recollect his master’s words ! 
Miss Graves within him asked the rapid little man, whether 
indeed his ideas were his own after draughts of champagne. 

The ideas, excited to an urgent animation by his racing 
trot, were a quiverful in flight over an England terrible to 
the foe and dancing on the green Eight so: but would 
we keep-up the dance, we must be red iron to touch: and 
the fighter for conquering is the one who can last and has 
the open brain; — and there you have a point against 
alcohol. Yes, and Miss Graves, if she would press it, with 
her natural face, could be pleasant and persuasive: and she 
ought to be told she ought to marry, for the good of the 
country. Women taking liquor: — Skepsey had a vision 
of his wife with rheumy peepers and miauly mouth, as he 


84 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


had once beheld the creature: — Oh ! they need discipline: 
not such would we have for the mothers of our English 
young. Decidedly the women of principle are bound to 
enter wedlock; they should be bound by law. Whereas, 
in the opposing case — the binding of the unprincipled 
to a celibate state — such a law would have saved Skepsey 
from the necessitated commission of deeds of discipline 
with one of the female sex, and have rescued his progeny 
from a likeness to the corn-stalk reverting to weed. He' 
had but a son for England’s defence; and the frame of his 
boy might be set quaking by a thump on the wind of a 
drum; the courage of William Barlow Skepsey would not 
stand against a sheep; it would wind-up hares to have a 
run at him out in the field. Offspring of a woman of 
principle! . . . but there is no rubbing out in life: why 
dream of it ? Only that one would not have one’s country 
the loser ! 

Dwell a moment on the reverse : — and first remember the 
lesson of the Captivity of the Jews and the outcry of their 
backsliding and repentance: — see a nation of the honour- 
ably begotten; muscular men disdaining the luxuries they 
will occasionally condescend to taste, like some tribe in 
Greece; boxers, rowers, runners, climliers; braced, indom- 
itable; magnanimous, as only the strong can be; an army 
at word, winning at a stroke the double battle of the hand 
and the heart: men who can walk the paths through the 
garden of the pleasures. They receive fitting mates, of a 
build to promise or aid in ensuring depth of chest and long 
reach of arm for their progen;^. 

Down goes the world before them. 

And we see how much would be due for this to a corps 
of ladies like Miss Graves, not allowed to remain too long 
on the stalk of spinsterhood. Her age might count tAventy- 
eight: too long! She should be taught that men can, 
though truly ordinary women cannot, walk these orderly 
paths through the garden. An admission to Avomen, hint- 
ing restrictions, on a ticket marked in moderation ” 
(meaning, that they may pluck a floAver or fruit along the 
pathway border to Avhich they are confined), speedily, alas, 
exhibits them at a mad scramble across the pleasure-beds. 
They know not moderation. Neither for their own sakes 


SKEPSEY IN MOTION 


85 


nor for the sakes of Posterity will they hold from excess, 
when they are not pledged to shun it. The reason is, that 
their minds cannot conceive the abstract, as men do. 

But there are grounds for supposing that the example 
before them of a sex exercising self-control in freedom, 
would induce women to pledge themselves to a similar 
abnegation, until they gain some sense of touch upon the 
impalpable duty to the generations coming after us : — 
thanks to the voluntary example we set them. 

The stupendous task, which had hitherto baffled Skepsey 
in the course of conversational remonstrances with his wife ; 
— that of getting the Idea of Posterity into the understand- 
ing of its principal agent, might then be mastered. 

Therefore clearly men have to begin the salutary move- 
ment: it manifestly devolves upon them. Let them at 
once take to rigorous physical training. Women under 
compulsion, as vessels: men in their magnanimity, patri- 
otically, voluntarily. 

Miss Graves must have had an intimation for him; he 
guessed it; and it plunged him into a conflict with her, 
that did not suffer him to escape without ruefully feeling 
the feebleness of his vocabulary: and consequently he 
made a reluctant appeal to figures, and it hung upon the 
bolder exhibition of lists and tables as to whether he 
was beaten; and if beaten, he was morally her captive; 
and this being the case, nothing could be more repulsive to 
Skepsey ; seeing that he, unable of his nature passively or 
partially to undertake a line of conduct, beheld himself 
wearing a detestable “ribbon,’’ for sign of an oath quite 
needlessly sworn (simply to satisfy the lady overcoming 
him with nimbler tongue), and blocking the streets, 
marching in bands beneath banners, howling hymns. 

Statistics, upon which his master and friends, after ex- 
changing opinions in argument, always fell back, frightened 
him. As long as they had no opponents of their own kind, 
they swept the field, they were intelligible, as the word 
“principle ” had become. But the appearance of one body 
of - Statistics invariably brought up another; and the 
strokes and counterstrokes were like a play of quarter-staff 
on the sconce, to knock all comprehension out of Skepsey. 
Otherwise he would not unwillingly have inquired to- 


86 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


morrow into the Statistics of the controversy between the 
waters of the wells and of the casks, prepared to walk over 
to the victorious, however objectionable that proceeding. 
He hoped to question his master some day: except that 
his master would very naturally have a tendency to sum-up 
in favour of wine — good wine, in moderation ; just as Miss 
Graves for the cup of tea — not so thoughtfully stipulating 
that it should be good and not too copious. Statistics are 
according to their conjurors; they are not independent 
bodies, with native colours; they needs must be painted 
by the different hands they pass through, and they may be 
multiplied; a nought or so counts for nothing with the 
teller. Skepsey saw that. Yet they can overcome: even 
as fictitious battalions, they can overcome. He shrank 
from the results of a ciphering match having him for 
object, and was ashamed of feeling to Statistics as women 
to giants; nevertheless he acknowledged that the badge 
was upon him, if Miss Graves should beat her master in 
her array of figures, to insist on his wearing it, as she 
would, she certainly would. And against his internal 
conviction perhaps; with the knowledge that the figures 
were an unfortified display, and his oath of bondage an 
unmanly servility, the silliest of ceremonies. He was 
shockingly feminine to Statistics. 

Mr. Durance despised them: he called them, arguing 
against Mr. Eadnor, those emotional things,’’ not compre- 
hensibly to Skepsey. But Mr. Durance, a very clever gen- 
tleman, could not be right in everything. He made strange 
remarks upon his country. Dr. Yatt attributed them to 
the state of his digestion. 

And Mr. Fenellan had said of Mr. Durance that, as a 
barrister wanting briefs, the speech in him had been 
bottled too long and was an overripe wine dripping sour 
drops through the rotten cork.” Mr. Fenellan said it 
laughing, he meant no harm. Skepsey was sure he had 
the words. He heard no more than other people hear; he 
remembered whole sentences, and many : on one of his 
runs, this active little machine, quickened by motion to 
fire, reviv^ed the audible of years back; whatever suited 
his turn of mind at the moment rushed to the rapid wheels 
within him. His master’s business and friends, his coun- 


SKEPSEY IN MOTION 


87 


try’s welfare and advancement, these, with records, items, 
anticipations, of the manlier sports to decorate, were his 
current themes ; all being chopped and tossed and mixed 
in salad accordance by his fervour of velocity. And if you 
would like a further definition of Genius, think of it as a 
form of swiftness. It is the lively young great-grandson, 
in the brain, of the travelling force whicli mathematicians 
put to paper, in a row of astounding ciphers, for the 
motion of earth through space ; to the generating of heat, 
whereof is multiplication, whereof deposited matter, and 
so your chaos, your half -lighted labyrinth, your ceaseless 
pressure to evolvement; and then Light, and so Creation, 
order, the work of Genius. What do you say ? 

Without having a great brain, the measure of it pos- 
sessed by Skepsey was alive under strong illumination. 
In his heart, while doing penance for his presumptuous- 
ness, he believed that he could lead regiments of men. 
He was not the army’s General, he was the General’s 
Lieutenant, now and then venturing to suggest a piece of 
counsel to his Chief. On his own particular drilled regi- 
ments, his Chief may rely ; and on his knowledge of the 
country of the campaign, roads, morasses, masking hills, 
dividing rivers. He had mapped for himself mentally the 
battles of conquerors in his favourite historic reading; 
and he understood the value of a plan, and the danger of 
sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for flank- 
ing ; and he manoeuvred a small one cunningly to make it 
a bolt at the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had ex- 
plained to him Frederick’s oblique attack, Hapoleon’s 
employment of the artillery arm preparatory to the hurling 
of the cataract on the spot of weakness, Wellington's 
parallel march with Marmont up to the hour of the deci- 
sive cut through the latter at Salamanca; and Skepsey 
treated his enemy to the like, deferentially reporting the 
engagement to a Chief whom his modesty kept in eminence, 
for the receiving of the principal honours. As to his men, 
of all classes and sorts, they are so supple with training 
that they sustain a defeat like the sturdy pugilist a knock 
off his legs, and up smiling a minute after — one of the 
truly beautiful sights on this earth! They go at the 
double half a day, never sounding a single pair of bellows 


88 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS. 


among them. They have their appetites in full control, 
to eat when they can, or cheerfully fast. They have 
healthy frames, you see; and as the healthy frame is not 
artificially heated, it ensues that, under any title you like, 
they profess the principles — into the bog we go, we have 
got round to it! — the principles of those horrible marching 
and chanting people I 

Then, must our England, to be redoubtable to the enemy, 
be a detestable country for habitation ? 

Here was a knot. 

Skepsey^s head dropped lower, he went as a ram. The 
sayings of Mr. Durance about his dear England: — that 
^‘her remainder of life is in the activity of her diseases”: 
— that she has so fed upon Pap of Compromise as to be 
unable any longer to conceive a muscular resolution ” : — 
that “she is animated only as the carcase to the blow -fly 
and so forth: — charged on him during his wrestle with his 
problem. And the gentleman had said, had permitted 
himself to say, that our England’s recent history was a 
provincial apothecary’s exhibition of the battle of bane and 
antidote. Mr. Durance could hardly mean it. But how 
could one answer him when he spoke of the torpor of the 
people, and of the succeeding Governments as a change of 
lacqueys — or the purse-string’s lacqueys ? He said, that 
Old England has taken to the arm-chair for good, and 
thinks it her whole business to pronounce opinions and 
listen to herself; and that, in the face of an armed Europe, 
this great nation is living on sufferance. Oh! 

Skepsey had uttered the repudiating exclamation. 

“ Feel quite up to it ? ” he was asked by his neighbour. 

The mover of armed hosts for the defence of the country 
sat in a third-class carriage of the train, approaching the 
first of the stations on the way to town. He was instantly 
up to the level of an external world, and fell into give 
and take with a burly broad communicative man ; located in 
London, but born in the North, in view of Durham cathe- 
dral, as he thanked his Lord; who was of the order of 
pork-butcher; which succulent calling had carried him 
down to near upon the borders of Surrey and Sussex, some 
miles beyond the new big house of a INIister whose name he 
had forgotten, though he had heard it mentioned by an 


SKEPSEY IX MOTION 


89 


acquaintance interested in the gentleman’s doings. But 
his object was to have a look at a rare breed of swine, 
worth the journey; that didn’t run to fat so much as to 
flavour, had longer legs, sharp snouts to plump their hams ; 
over from Spain, it seemed; and the gentleman owning 
them was for selling them, finding them wild past correc- 
tion. But the acquaintance mentioned, who was down to 
visit t’other gentleman’s big new edifice in workmen’s 
hands, had a mother, who had been cook to a family, and 
was now widow of a cook’s shop; ham, beef, and sausages, 
prime pies to order ; and a good specimen herself ; and if 
ever her son saw her spirit at his bedside, there would n’t 
be room for much else in that chamber — supposing us to 
keep our shapes. But he was the right sort of sou, anxious 
to push his mother’s shop where he saw a chance, and do 
it cheap; and those foreign pigs, after a disappointment 
to their importer, might be had pretty cheap, and were 
accounted tasty. 

Skepsey’s main thought was upon war: the man had 
discoursed of pigs. 

He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar, 
that pigs had been the cause of more bloody battles than 
any other animal. 

How so ? the pork-butcher asked, and said he was not 
much of a scholar, and pigs might be provoking, but he 
had not heard they were a cause of strife between man and 
man. For possession of them, Skepsey explained. Oh! 
possession! Why, we ’ve heard of bloody battles for the 
possession of women! Men will fight for almost anything 
they care to get or call their own, the pork-butcher said ; 
and he praised Old England for avoiding war. Skepsey 
nodded. How if war is forced on us? — Then we fight. — 
Suppose we are not prepared? — We soon get that up. — 
Skepsey requested him to state the degree of resistance he 
might think he could bring against a pair of skilful fists, 
in a place out of hearing of the police. 

Say, you ! ” said the pork-butcher, and sharply smiled, 
for he was a man of size. 

would give you two minutes,” rejoined Skepsey, 
eyeing him intently and kindly: insomuch that it could be 
seen he was not in the conundrum vein. 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


‘^Eather short allowance, eh, master?’^ said the bigger 
man. ‘‘Feel here;^’ he straightened out his arm and 
doubled it, raising a proud bridge of muscle. 

Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle. 
“Twice that, would not help without the science,’’ he re- 
marked, and let his arm be gripped in turn. 

The pork-butcher’s throat sounded, as it were, commas 
and colons, punctuations in his reflections, while he tight- 
ened fingers along the iron lump. “Stringy. You’re a 
wiry one, no mistake.” It was encomium. With the in- 
grained contempt of size for a smallness that has not 
yet taught it the prostrating lesson, he said: “Weight 
tells.” 

“In a wrestle,” Skepsey admitted. “Allow me to say, 
you would not touch me.” 

“ And how do you know I ’m not a trifle handy with the 
maulers myself ? ” 

“You will pardon me for saying, it would be worse for 
you if you were.” 

The pork-butcher was flung backward. “Are you a 
Professor, may I inquire ? ” 

Skepsey rejected the title. “I can engage to teach 
young men, upon a proper observance of first principles.” 

“' They be hanged ! ” cried the rufiied pork-butcher. 
“Our best men never got it out of books. Now, you 
tell me — you ’ve got a spiflicating style of talk about you : 
— no brag, you tell me — course, the best man wins, if you 
mean that: — now, if I was one of ’em, and I fetches you a 
bit of a flick, how then ? Would you be ready to step out 
with a real Professor ? ” 

“I should claim a fair field,” was the answer, made in 
modesty. 

“ And you ’d expect to whop me with they there princi- 
ples of yours ? ” 

“I should expect to.” 

“ Bang me ! ” was roared. After a stare a.t the mild 
little figure with the fitfully dead-levelled large grey eyes 
in front of him, the pork-butcher resumed: “Take you for 
the man you say you be, you ’re just the man for my friend 
Jam and me. He dearly loves to see a set-to, self the 
same. What prettier ? And if you would be so obliging 


SKEPSEY m MOTION 


91 


some day as to favour us with a display, we ^d head a cap 
conformably, whether you ’d the best of it, according to 
your expectations, or t’ other way: — For there never was 
shame in a jolly good licking ! as the song says: that is, if 
you take it and make it appear good, — And find you 
an opponent meet and fit, never doubt. Ever had the 
worse of an encounter, sir ? ” 

Often, sir.” 

^‘Well, that's good. And it didn't destroy your 
confidence ? ” 

‘‘Added to it, I hope.” 

At this point, it became a crying necessity for Skepsey 
to escape froin an area of boastfulness, into which he had 
fallen inadvertently; and he hastened to apologize “for 
his personal reference,” that was intended for an illustra- 
tion of our country caught unawares by a highly trained 
picked soldiery, inferior in numbers to the patriotic levies, 
but sharp at the edge and knowing how to strike. Meas- 
ure the axe, measure the tree; and which goes down first ? 

“Invasion, is it? — and you mean, we're not to hit 
back ? ” the pork-butcher bellowed, and presently secured 
a murmured approbation from an audience of three, that 
had begun to comprehend the dialogue, and strengthened 
him in a manner to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever 
urging analogies of too extended a circle to close sharply 
on the mark. He had no longer a chance, he was over- 
borne, identified with the fated invader, rolled away into 
the chops of the Channel, to be swallowed up entire, and 
not a rag left of him, but John Bull tucking up his shirt- 
sleeves on the shingle beach, ready for a second or a third; 
crying to them to come on. 

Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the 
vanquished, the pork-butcher told Skepsey he should like 
to see more of him, and introduced himself on a card: 
Benjamin Shaplow, not far from the Bank. 

They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an 
engine, sounding like merry messages of the damned to 
their congeners in the anticipatory stench of the cab- 
droppings above, disconnected sane hearing; perverted it, 
no doubt. Or else it was the stamp of a particular name 
on his mind, which impressed Skepsey, as he bored 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


down the street and across the bridge, to fancy in recollec- 
tion, that Mr. Shaplow, when reiterating the wish for self 
and friend to witness a display of his cunning with the 
fists, had spoken the name of Jarniman. An unusual 
name: yet more than one Jarniman might well exist. 
And unlikely that a friend of the pork- butcher would be 
the person whom Mr. Radnor first prohibited and then de- 
sired to receive. It hardly mattered : — considering that 
the Dutch Navy did really, incredible as it seems now, 
come sailing a good way up the River Thames, into the 
very main artery of Old England. And what thought the 
Tower of it ? Skepsey looked at the Tower in sympathy, 
wondering whether the Tower had seen those impudent 
Dutch : a nice people at home, he had heard.' Mr. Shap- 
low’s Jarniman might actually be Mr. Radnor’s, he in- 
clined to think. At any rate he was now sure of the 
name. 


CHAPTER XI 

WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF LOVE 
HAVING SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 

Fenellan, in a musing exclamation, that was quite spon- 
taneous, had put a picture on the departing Skepsey, as 
observed from an end of the Lakelands upper terrace-walk. 
“ Queer little water-wagtail it is ! ” And Lady Grace 
Halley and Miss Graves and Mrs. Cormyn, snugly silken 
dry ones, were so taken with the pretty likeness after 
hearing Victor call the tripping dripping creature the hap- 
piest man in England, that they nursed it in their minds 
for a Bewick tailpiece to the chapter of a pleasant rural 
day. It imbedded the day in an idea that it had been 
rural. 

We are indebted almost for construction to those who 
will define us briefly: we are but scattered leaves to the 
general comprehension of us until such a work of binding 
and labelling is done. And should the definition be not 
so correct as brevity pretends to make it at one stroke, we 


SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 


93 


are at least rendered portable; thus we pass into the con- 
ceptions of our fellows, into the records, down to poster- 
ity. Anecdotes of England’s happiest man were related, 
outlines of his personal history requested. His nomina- 
tion in chief among the traditionally very merry Islanders 
was hardly borne out by the tale of his enchainment with 
a drunken yokefellow — unless upon the Durance version 
of the felicity of his countrymen; still, the water- 
wagtail carried it, Skepsey trotted into memories. Heroes 
conducted up Fame’s temple-steps by ceremonious histo- 
rians, who are studious, when the platform is reached, of 
the art of setting them beneath the flambeau of a final 
image, before thrusting them inside to be rivetted on their 
pedestals, have an excellent chance of doing the same, let 
but the provident narrators direct that image to paint the 
thing a moth-like humanity desires, in the thing it shrinks 
from. Miss Priscilla Graves now fastened her meditations 
upon Skepsey; and it was important to him. 

Tobacco withdrew the haunting shadow of the Eev. 
Septimus Barmby from Nesta. She strolled beside Louise 
de Seilles, to breathe sweet-sweet in the dear friend’s ear 
and tell her she loved her. The presence of the German 
had, without rousing animosity, damped the young French- 
woman, even to a revulsion when her feelings had been 
touched by hearing praise of her France, and wounded by 
the subjects of the praise. She bore the national scar, 
which is barely skin-clothing of a gash that will not heal 
since her country was overthrown and dismembered. 
Colney Durance could excuse the unreasonableness in her, 
for it had a dignity, and she controlled it, and quietly 
suffered, trusting to the steady, tireless, concentrated aim 
of her France. In the Gallic mind of our time, France 
appears as a prematurely buried Glory, that heaves the 
mound oppressing breath and cannot cease; and calls 
hourly, at times keenly, to be remembered, rescued from 
the pain and the mould-spots of that foul sepulture. 
Mademoiselle and Colney were friends, partly divided 
by her speaking once of revanche ; whereupon he assumed 
the chair of the Moralist, with its right to lecture, and 
went over to the enemy; his talk savoured of a German. 
Our holding of the balance, taking two sides, is incompre- 


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ONE OF OVR CONQUERORS 


hensible to a people quivering with the double wound to 
body and soul, ^he was of Breton blood. Cymric enough 
was in Nesta to catch any thrill from her and join to her 
mood, if it hung out a colour sad or gay, and was noble, 
as any mood of this dear Louise would surely be. 

Nataly was not so sympathetic. Only the Welsh and 
pure Irish are quick at the feelings of the Celtic French. 
Nataly came of a Yorkshire stock; she had the bravery, 
humaneness and generous temper of our civilized North, 
and a taste for mademoiselle’s fine breeding, with a 
distaste for the singular air of superiority in composure 
which it was granted to mademoiselle to wear with an 
unassailable reserve when the roughness of the commercial 
boor was obtrusive. She said of her to Colney, as they 
watched the couple strolling by the lake below: Nesta 
brings her out of her frosts. I suppose it ’s the presence 
of Dr. Schlesien. 1 have known it the same after an even- 
ing of Wagner’s music.” 

“Bichard Wagner Germanized ridicule of the French 
when they were down,” said Colney. “She comes of a 
blood that never forgives.” 

“‘Never forgives’ is horrible to think of! I fancied 
you liked your ‘ Kelts,’ as you call them.” 

Colney seized on a topic that shelved a less agreeable 
one that he saw coming. “You English won’t descend to 
understand what does not resemble you. The French are 
in a state of feverish patriotism. You refuse to treat them 
for a case of fever. They are lopped of a limb: you tell 
them to be at rest ! ” 

“ You know I am fond of them.” 

^‘And the Kelts, as they are called, can’t and won’t 
forgive injuries ; look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the 
Keltic Scot. Have you heard them talk ? It happened in 
the year 1400: it’s alive to them as if it were yesterday. 
Old History is as dead to the English as their first father. 
They beg for the privilege of pulling the forelock to the 
bearers of the titles of the men who took their lands from 
them and turn them to the uses of cattle. The Saxon 
English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than any people 
allowed to subsist ever received : you see it to this day ; 
the crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed 


SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 


95 


and denied, but they have it and betray the effects ; and 
it^s patent in their Journals, all over their literature. 
Where it ^s not seen, another blood ’s at work. The Kelt 
wonT accept that form of slavery. Let him be servile, 
supple, cunning, treacherous, and to appearance time-serving, 
he will always remember his day of manly independence 
and who robbed him : he is the poetic animal of the races 
of modern men.’’ 

“ You give him Pagan colours.” 

Natural colours. He does not offer the other cheek or 
turn his back to be kicked after a knock to the ground. 
Instead of asking him to forgive, which he cannot do, you 
must teach him to admire. A mercantile community 
guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the ban- 
quet presided over by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. 
However, there’s the secret of him; that I respect in him. 
His admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds, 
wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your nega- 
tive passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible. And his faults, 
short of ferocity, are amusing.” 

But the fits of ferocity ! ” 

^^They are inconscient, real fits. They come of a hot 
nerve. He is manageable, sober, too, when his mind is 
charged' As to the French people, they are the most 
mixed of any European nation; so they are packed with 
contrasts : they are full of sentiment, they are sharply 
logical ; free-thinkers, devotees ; affectionate, ferocious ; 
frivolous, tenacious ; the passion of the season operating 
like sun or moon on these qualities ; and they can reach to 
ideality out of sensualism. Below your level, they ’re above 
it : — a paradox is at home with them ! ” 

^^My friend, you speak seriously — an unusual compli- 
ment,” Nataly said, and ungratefully continued: “You 
know what is occupying me. I want your opinion. I 
guess it. I want to hear — a mean thirst perhaps, and 
you would pay me any number of compliments to avoid 
the subject; but let me hear : — this house ! ” 

Colney shrugged in resignation. “ Victor works himself 
out,” he replied. 

We are to go through it all again ? ” 

“If you have not the force to contain him.” 


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OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


How contain him ? ’’ 

Up went Colney’s shoulders. 

You may see it all before you/’ he said, straight as 
the Seine chaussee from the hill of La Roche Guyon.” 

He looked for her recollection of the scene. 

^^Ah, the happy ramble that year!” she cried. ^^And 
my Nesta just seven. We had been six months at Craye. 
Every day of our life together looks happy to me, looking 
back, though I know that every day had the same troubles. 
I don’t think I ’m dehcient in courage ; I think I could meet. 
. . . But the false position so cruelly weakens me. I am 
no woman’s equal when I have to receive or visit. It seems 
easier to meet the worst in life — danger, death, anything. 
Pardon me for talking so. Perhaps we need not have left 
Craye or Creckholt . . . ? ” she hinted an interrogation. 

Though I am not sorry ; it is not good to be where one 
tastes poison. Here it may be as deadly, worse. Dear 
friend, I am so glad you remember La Roche Guyon. He 
was popular with the dear French people.” 

In spite of his accent.” 

It is not so bad ! ” 

And that you ’ll defend 1 ” 

Consider : these neighbours we come among ; they may 
have heard ...” 

Act on the assumption.” 

You forget the principal character. Victor promises ; 
he may have learnt a lesson at Creckholt. But look at 
this house he has built. How can I — any woman — con- 
tain him ! He must have society.” 

“ Paraitre ! ” 

He must be in the front. He has talked of Parliament.” 

Colney’s liver took the thrust of a skewer through it. He 
spoke as in meditative encomium : His entry into Parlia- 
ment would promote himself and family to a station of 
eminence naked over the Clock Tower of the House.” 

She moaned. At the vilest, I cannot regret my conduct 
— bear what I may. I can bear real pain : what kills me 
is, the suspicion. And I feel it like a guilty wretch 1 And 
I do not feel the guilt! I should do the same again, on 
reflection. I do believe it saved him. I do; oh! I do, I 
do. I cannot expect my family to see with my eyes. You 


SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 


9T 


know them — my brother and sisters think I have disgraced 
them ; they put no value on my saving him. It sounds 
childish ; it is true. He had fallen into a terrible black 
mood.’^ 

He had an hour of gloom.’^ 

An hour ! 

^‘But an hour, with him ! It means a good deal.’’ 

Ah, friend, I take your words. He sinks terribly when 
he sinks at all. — Spare us a little while. — We have to 
judge of what is good in the circumstances : — I hear your 
reply ! But the principal for me to study is Victor. You 
have accused me of being the voice of the enamoured woman. 
I follow him, I know; I try to advise; I find it is wisdom 
to submit. My people regard my behaviour as a wickedness 
or a madness. I did save him. I joined my fate with his. 
I am his mate, to help, and I cannot oppose him, to distract 
him. I do my utmost for privacy. He must entertain. 
Believe me, I feel for them — sisters and brother. And 
now that my sisters are married . . . My brother has a 
man’s hardness.” 

‘^Colonel Dreighton did not speak harshly, at our last 
meeting.” 

‘^He spoke of me ?” 

‘‘He spoke in the tone of a brother.” 

“Victor promises — I won’t repeat it. Yes, I see the 
house ! There appears to be a prospect, a hope — I cannot 
allude to it. Craye and Creckholt may have been some 
lesson to him. — Selwyn spoke of me kindly ? Ah, yes, it 
is the way with my people to pretend that Victor has been 
the ruin of me, that they may come round to family senti- 
ments. In the same way, his relatives, the Duvidney ladies, 
have their picture of the woman misleading him. Imagine 
me the naughty adventuress ! ” — Xataly falsified the thought 
insurgent at her heart, in adding : “ I do not say I am blame- 
less.” It was a concession to the circumambient enemy, of 
whom even a good friend was a part, and not better than 
a respectful emissary. The dearest of her friends belonged 
to that hostile world. Only Victor, no other, stood with her 
against the world. Her child, yes ; the love of her child 
she had; but the child’s destiny was an alien phantom, 
looking at her with harder eyes than she had vision of in 

7 


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ONE OF OITR CONQUERORS 


her family. She did not say she was blameless, did not 
affect the thought. She would have wished to say, for 
small encouragement she would have said, that her case 
could be pleaded. 

Colney^s features were not inviting, though the expres- 
sion was not repellent. She sighed deeply ; and to count 
on something helpful by mentioning it, reverted to the ‘ pros- 
pect’ which there appeared to be. Victor speaks of the 
certainty of his release.” 

His release ! Her language pricked a satirist’s gall- 
bladder. Colney refrained from speaking to wound, and 
enjoyed a silence that did it. 

^^Ho you see any possibility? — you knew her,” she said 
coldly. 

Counting the number of times he has been expecting the 
release, he is bound to believe it near at hand.” 

^^You don’t?” she asked: her bosom was up in a crisis 
of expectation for the answer : and on a pause of half-a- 
minute, she could have uttered the answer herself. 

He perceived the insane eagerness through her mask, and 
despised it, pitying the woman. And you don’t,” lie said. 
^‘You catch at delusions, to excuse the steps you consent 
to take. Or you want me to wear the blinkers, the better 
to hoodwink your own eyes. You see it as well as I : — If 
you enter that house, you have to go through the same as at 
Creckholt : — and he’ll be the first to take fright.” 

He finds you in tears : he is immensely devoted ; he 
flings up all to protect ^ his Nataly.’ ” 

^^No : you are unjust to him. He woidd fling up all : — ” 

But his Nataly prefers to be dragged through fire ? 
As you please ! ” 

She bowed to her chastisement. One motive in her con- 
sultation with him came of the knowledge of his capacity 
to inflict it and his honesty in the act, and a thirst she had 
to hear the truth loud-tongued from him ; together with a 
feeling that he was excessive and satiric, not to be read by 
the letter of his words : and in consequence, she could bear 
the lash from him, and tell her soul that he overdid it, and 
have an unjustly-treated self to cherish. — But in very truth 
she was a woman who loved to hear the truth; she was 


SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 


99 


formed to love the truth her position reduced her to violate ; 
she esteemed the hearing it as medical to her ; she selected 
for counsellor him who would apply it : so far she went on 
the straight way ; and the desire for a sustaining deception 
from the mouth of a trustworthy man set her hanging on 
his utterances with an anxious hope of the reverse of what 
was to come and what she herself apprehended, such as 
checked her pulses and iced her feet and lingers. The reason 
being, not that she was craven or absurd or paradoxical, but 
that, living at an intenser strain upon her nature than she 
or any around her knew, her strength snapped, she broke 
down by chance there where Colney was rendered spiteful in 
beholding the display of her inconsequent if not puling 
sex. 

She might have sought his counsel on another subject, if 
a paralyzing chill of her frame in the fore view of it had 
allowed her to speak : she felt grave alarms in one direction, 
where Nesta stood in the eye of her father ; besides an un- 
formed dread that the simplicity in generosity of Victor’s 
nature was doomed to show signs of dross ultimately, 
under the necessity he imposed upon himself to run out 
his forecasts, and scheme, and defensively compel the 
world to serve his ends, for the protection of those dear 
to him. 

At night he was particularly urgent with her for the 
harmonious duet in praise of Lakelands; and plied her 
with questions all round and about it, to bring out the 
dulcet accord. He dwelt on his choice of costly marbles, 
his fireplace and mantelpiece designs, the great hall, and 
suggestions for imposing and beautiful furniture ; concord- 
antly enough, for the large, the lofty and rich of colour won 
her enthusiasm ; but overwhelmingly to any mood of resist- 
ance; and strangely in a man who had of late been adopt- 
ing, as if his own, a modern tone, or the social and literary 
hints of it, relating to the right uses of wealth, and the 
duty as well as the delight of living simply. 

‘^Fredi was pleased.” 

^^Yes, she was, dear.” 

She is our girl, my love. ^ I could live and die here ! ’ 
Live, she may. There ’s room enough.” 

Nataly saw the door of a covert communication pointed 


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ONE OF OITR CONQUERORS 


at in that remark. She gathered herself for an effort to 
do battle. 

She quite a child, Victor.’’ 

‘^The time begins to run. We have to look forward 
now : — I declare, it ’s I who seem the provident mother 
for Fredi ! ” 

Let our girl wait; don’t hurry her mind to . . . She is 
happy with her father and mother. She is in the happiest 
time of her life, before those feelings distract.” 

^^If we see good fortune for her, we can’t let it pass 
her.” 

A pang of the resolution now to debate the case with 
Victor, which would be of necessity to do the avoided thing 
and roll up the forbidden curtain opening on their whole 
history past and prospective, was met in Nataly’s bosom by 
the more bitter immediate confession that she was not his 
match. To speak would be to succumb; and shamefully 
after the effort; and hopelessly after being overborne by 
him. There was not the anticipation of a set contest to 
animate the woman’s naturally valiant heart; he was too 
strong: and his vividness in urgency' overcame her in 
advance, fascinated her sensibility through recollection ; 
he fanned an inclination, lighted it to make it a passion, 
a frenzied resolve — she remembered how and when. She 
had quivering cause to remember the fateful day of her 
step, in a letter received that morning from a married 
sister, containing no word of endearment or proposal for a 
meeting. An unregretted day, if Victor would think of the 
dues to others ; that is, would take station with the world 
to see his reflected position, instead of seeing it through 
their self-justifying knowledge of the honourable truth of 
their love, and pressing to claim and snatch at whatsoever 
the world bestows on its orderly subjects. 

They had done evil to no one as yet. Nataly thought 
that; notwithstanding the outcry of the ancient and with- 
ered woman who bore Victor Radnor’s name : for whom, in 
consequence of the rod the woman had used, this tenderest 
of hearts could summon no emotion. If she had it, the 
thing was not to be hauled up to consciousness. Her feel- 
ing was, that she forgave the wrinkled Malignity : pity and 
contrition dissolving in the effort to produce the placable 


SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE 


101 


forgiveness. She was frigid because she knew rightly of 
herself, that she in the place of power would never have 
struck so meanly. But the mainspring of the feeling in an 
almost remorseless bosom drew from certain chance expres- 
sions of retrospective physical distaste on Victor’s part ; — 
hard to keep from a short utterance between the nuptial 
two, of whom the unshamed exuberant male has found the 
sweet reverse in his mate, a haven of heavenliness, to 
delight in: — these conjoined with a woman’s unspoken 
pleading ideas of her own, on her own behalf, had armed 
her jealously in vindication of Nature. 

Now, as long as they did no palpable wrong about them, 
Nataly could argue her case in her conscience — deep down 
and out of hearing, where women under scourge of the laws 
they have not helped decree may and do deliver their minds. 
She stood in that subterranean recess for Nature against the 
Institutions of jVIan : a woman little adapted for the post of 
rebel ; but to this, by the agency of circumstances, it had 
come ; she who was designed by nature to be an ornament 
of those Institutions opposed them : and when thinking of 
the rights and the conduct of the decrepit Legitimate — 
virulent in a heathen vindictiveness declaring itself holy — 
she had Nature’s logic, Nature’s voice, for self-defence. It 
was eloquent with her, to the deafening of other voices in 
herself, even to the convincing of herself, when she was 
wrought by the fires within to feel elementally. The other 
voices within her issued of the acknowledged dues to her 
family and to the world — the civilization protecting women : 
sentences thereanent in modern books and Journals. But the 
remembrance of moods of fiery exaltation, when the Nature 
she called by name of Love raised the chorus within to stop 
all outer buzzing, was, in a perpetual struggle with a whirl- 
pool, a constant support while she and Victor were one at 
heart. The sense of her standing alone made her sway ; 
and a thought of differences with him caused frightful 
apprehensions of the abyss. 

Luxuriously she applied to his public life for witness that 
he had governed wisely as well as affectionately so long ; and 
he might therefore, with the chorussing of the world of 
public men, expect a woman blindfold to follow his lead. 
But no ; we may be rebels against our time and its Laws : 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


if we are really for Nature, we are not lawless. Nataly’s 
untutored scruples, which came side by side with her ability 
to plead for her acts, restrained her from complicity in tlie 
ensnaring of a young man of social rank to espouse the 
daughter of a couple socially insurgent — stained, to common 
thinking, should denunciation come. The Nature upholding 
her fled at a vision of a stranger entangled. Pitiable to 
reflect, that he was not one of the adventurer-lords of prey 
w'ho hunt and run down shadowed heiresses and are con- 
gratulated on their luck in a tolerating country I How was 
the young man to be warned ? How, under the happiest of 
suppositions, propitiate his family ! And such a family, if 
consenting with knowledge, would consent only for the love 
of money. It was angling with as vile a bait as the rascal 
lord’s. Humiliation hung on the scheme; it struck to 
scorching in the contemplation of it. And it darkened her 
reading of Victor’s character. 

She did not ask for the speciflcation of a good fortune 
that might pass ; ” wishing to save him from his wonted 
twists of elusiveness, and herself with him from the dread 
discussion it involved upon one point. 

The day was pleasant to all, except perhaps poor made- 
moiselle,” she said. 

Peridon should have come ? ” 

Present or absent, his chances are not brilliant, I fear.” 

And Pempton and Priscy ! ” 

They are growing cooler ! ” 

With their grotesque objections to one another’s habits 
at table ! ” 

Can we ever hope to get them over it ? ” 

When Priscy drinks Port and Pempton munches beef, 
Colney says.” 

should say, when they feel warmly enough to think 
little of their differences.” 

^^Pire smoothes the creases, yes; and fire is what they 're 
both wanting in. Though Priscy has Concert-pathos in her 
voice : — could n’t act a bit ! And Pempton’s ’cello tones 
now and then have gone through me — simply, from his 
fiddle-bow, I believe. Don’t talk to me of feeling in a 
couple, within reach of one another and sniffing objections. 
— Good, then, for a successful day to-day so far ? ” 


MEMBERS OF A HOUSEHOLD 


103 


He neared her, wooing her ; and she assented, with a 
franker smile than she had worn through the day. 

The common burden on their hearts — the simple discus- 
sion to come of the task of communicating dire actualities 
to their innocent Nesta — was laid aside. 


CHAPTER XII 

TREATS OF THE DUMBNESS POSSIBLE WITH MEMBERS OF A 
HOUSEHOLD HAVING ONE HEART 

Two that live together in union are supposed to be inti- 
mate on every leaf. Particularly when they love one an- 
other and the cause they have at heart is common to them 
in equal measure, the uses of a cordial familiarity forbid re- 
serves upon important matters between them, as we think ; 
not thinking of an imposed secretiveiiess, beneath the false 
external of submissiveness, which comes of an experience of 
peated inefficiency to maintain a case in opposition, on the 
part of the loquently weaker of the pair. In Constitutional 
Kingdoms a powerful Government needs not to be tyranni- 
cal to lean oppressively; it is more serviceable to party than 
agreeable to country; and where the alliance of men and 
women binds a loving couple, of whom one is a torrent of 
persuasion, their differings are likely to make the other 
resemble a log of the torrent. It is borne along; it dreams 
of a distant corner of the way for a determined stand ; it 
consents to its whirling in anticipation of an undated hour 
when it will no longer be neutral. 

There may be, moreover, while each has the key of the 
fellow breast, a mutually sensitive nerve to protest against 
intrusion of light or sound. The cloud over the name of 
their girl could now strike Xataly and Victor dumb in their 
taking of counsel. She divined that his hint had encouraged 
him to bring the crisis nearer, and he that her comprehension 
had become tremblingly awake. They shrank, each of them, 
the more from an end drawing closely into view. All sub- 
jects glooming off or darkening up to it were shunned by 


104 


ONE OF OUB CONQUEROKS 


them verbally, and if they found themselves entering be- 
neath that shadow, conversation passed to an involuntary 
gesture, more explicit with him, significant of the prohibited, 
though not acknowledging it. 

All the stronger was it Victor’s purpose, leaping in his 
fashion to the cover of action as an escape from perplexity, 
to burn and scheme for the wedding of their girl — the safe 
wedding of that dearest, to have her protected, secure, with 
the world warm about her. And he well knew why his 
Nataly had her look of a closed vault (threatening, if 
opened, to thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further 
hints. He chose to call it feminine inconsistency, in a 
woman who walked abroad with a basket of marriage -ties 
for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon 
have to speak the dark words to their girl ; and the idea 
of any doing of it, caught at his throat. Eeasonably she 
dreaded the mother’s task ; pardonably indeed. But it is 
for the mother to do, with a girl. He deputed it lightly to 
the mother because he could see himself stating the facts 
to a son. ^^And, my dear boy, you will from this day 
draw your five thousand a year, and we double it on the 
day of your marriage, living at Lakelands or where you 
will.” 

His desire for his girl’s protection by the name of one of 
our great Families, urged him to bind Nataly to the fact, 
with the argument that it was preferable for the girl to 
hear their story during her green early youth, while she 
reposed her beautiful blind faith in the discretion of her 
parents, and as an immediate step to the placing of her 
hand in a husband’s. He feared that her mother required 
schooling to tell the story vindicatingly and proudly, in a 
manner to distinguish instead of degrading or temporarily 
seeming to accept degradation. 

The world would weigh on her confession of the weight 
of the world on her child; she would want inciting and 
strengthening, if one judged of her capacity to meet the 
trial by her recent bearing ; and how was he to do it ! He 
could not imagine himself encountering the startled, tremu- 
lous, nascent intelligence in those pure brown dark-lashed 
eyes of Nesta; he pitied the poor mother. Fancifully 
directing her to say this and that to the girl, his tongue ran 


MEMBEKS OF A HOUSEHOLD 


105 


till it was cut from his heart and left to wag dead colourless 
words. 

^ The prospect of a similar business of exposition, certainly? 
devolving upon the father in treaty with • the fortunate 
youth, gripped at his vitals a minute, so intense was his 
pride in appearing woundless and scaiTess, a shining surface, 
like pure health’s, in the sight of men. Nevertheless he 
skimmed the story, much as a lecturer strikes his wand on 
the prominent places of a map, that is to show us how he 
arrived at the principal point, which we are all agreed to 
find chiefly interesting. This with Victor was the naming 
of Nesta’s bridal endowment. He rushed to it. “ My girl 
will have ten thousand a year settled on her the day of her 
marriage.’^ Choice of living at Lakelands was offered. 

It helped him over the unpleasant part of that interview. 
At the same time, it moved him to a curious contempt of the 
youth. He had to conjure-up an image of the young man in 
person, to correct the sentiment : and it remained as a kind 
of bruise only half cured. 

Mr. Dudley Sowerby was not one of the youths whose 
presence would rectify such an abstract estimate of the 
genus pursuer. He now came frequently of an evening, to 
practise a duet for flutes with Victor ; — a Mercadante, 
honeyed and flowing; too honeyed to suit a style that, as 
Fenellan characterized it to Nataly, went through the music 
somewhat like an inquisitive tourist in a foreign town, 
conscientious to get to the end of the work of pleasure ; 
until the notes had become familiar, when it rather re- 
sembled a constable's walk along the midnight streets into 
collision with a garlanded* roysterer ; and the man of order 
and the man of passion, true to the measure though they 
were, seeming to dissent, almost to wrangle, in their differ- 
ent ways of winding out the melody, on to the last move- 
ment; which was plainly a question between home to the 
strayed reveller’s quarters or off to the lock-up. Victor 
was altogether the younger of the two. But his vehement 
accompaniment was a tutorship ; Mr. Sowerby improved ; 
it was admitted by Nesta and mademoiselle that he gained 
a show of feeling ; he had learnt that feeling was wanted. 
Passion, he had not a notion of : otherwise he would not be 
delaying ; — the interview, dramatized by the father of the 


106 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


young bud of womanhood, would be taking place, and the 
entry into Lakelands cal(3ulable, for Nataly’s comfort, as 
under the aegis of the Cantor earldom. Gossip flies to a 
wider circle round the members of a great titled family, is 
inaudible ; or no longer the diptherian whisper the com- 
monalty hear of the commonalty : and so we see the social 
uses of our aristocracy survive. We do not want the shield 
of any family ; it is the situation that wants it ; Nataly 
ought to be awake to the fact. One blow and we have 
silenced our enemy : Nesta’s wedding-day has relieved her 
parents. 

Victor’s thoughts upon the instrument for striking that 
blow, led him to suppose Mr. Sowerby might be meditating 
on the extent of the young lady’s fortune. He talked ran- 
domly of money, in a way to shatter Nataly’s conception of 
him. He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his 
practise to shun the doing ; and hit the resounding note on 
mines, which have risen in the market like the crest of a 
serpent, casting a certain spell upon the mercantile under- 
standing. Fredi’s diamonds from her own mine, or what 
once was — and she still reserves a share,” were to be shown 
to Mr. Sowerby. 

Nataly respected the young fellow for not displaying 
avidity at the flourish of the bait, however it might be 
affecting him ; and she fancied that he did laboriously, in 
his way earnestly, study her girl, to sound for harmony 
between them, previous to a wooing. She was a closer 
reader of social character than Victor; from refraining to 
run on the broad lines which are but faintly illustrative of 
the individual one in being common to all — unless we have 
hit by chance on an example of the downright in roguery or 
folly or simple goodness. Mr. Sowerby’s bearing to Nesta 
was hardly warmed by the glitter of diamonds. His next 
visit showed him livelier in courtliness, brighter, fresher ; 
but that was always his way at the commencement of every 
visit, as if his reflections on the foregone had come to a 
satisfactory conclusion ; and the labours of the new study 
of the maiden ensued again in due course to deaden him. 

Gentleman he was. In the recognition of his quality as 
a man of principle and breeding, Nataly was condemned by 
thoughts of Nesta’s future to question whether word or act 


MEMBEES OF A HOUSEHOLD 


107 


of hers should, if inclination on both sides existed, stand 
between her girl and a true gentleman. She counselled 
herself, as if the counsel were in requisition, to be passive ; 
and so doing, she more acutely than Victor — save in his 
chance flashes — discerned the twist of her very nature 
caused by their false position. And her panacea for ills, 
the lost little cottage, would not have averted it : she would 
there have had the same coveting desire to name a man of 
breeding, honour, station, for Nesta’s husband. Perhaps in 
the cottage, choosing at leisure, her consent to see the 
brilliant young creature tied to the best of dull men would 
have been unready, without the girl to push it. For the 
Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in liveliness ; he 
took the second part, as it is painful for a woman with the 
old-fashioned ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold ; 
resembling in his look the deaf, who constantly require to 
have an observation repeated; resembling the most intelli- 
gent of animals, which we do not name, and we reprove 
ourselves for seeing a likeness. 

Yet the likeness or apparent likeness would suggest that 
we have not so much to fear upon the day of the expla- 
nation to him. Some gain is there. Shameful thought ! 
Nataly hastened her mind to gather many instances or 
indications testifying to the sterling substance in young 
Mr. Sowerby, such as a mother would pray for her son-in- 
law to possess. She discovered herself feeling as the 
burdened mother, not providently for her girl, in the choice 
of a mate. The perception was clear, and not the less did 
she continue working at the embroidery of Mr. Sowerby on 
the basis of his excellent moral foundations, all the while 
hoping, praying, that he might not be lured on to the pro- 
posal for Nesta. But her subservience to the power of the 
persuasive will in Victor — which was like the rush of a 
conflagration — compelled her to think realizingly of any 
scheme he allowed her darkly to read. Opposition to him, 
was comparable to the stand of blocks of timber before 
flame. Colney Durance had done her the mischief we take 
from the pessimist when we are overweighted : in darken- 
ing the vision of external aid from man or circumstance to 
one who felt herself mastered. Victor could make her 
treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though 


108 


ONE OF OJJR CONQUEEOKS 


the heart protested. His first conquest of her was In her 
blood, to weaken a spirit of resistance. For the precedent 
of submission is a charm upon the faint-hearted through 
love : it unwinds, un wills them. Nataly resolved fixedly, 
that there must be a day for speaking ; and she had her 
moral sustainment in the resolve ; she had also a torment- 
ing consciousness of material support in the thought, that 
the day was not present, was possibly distant, might never 
arrive. Would Victor’s release come sooner ? And that 
was a prospect bearing resemblance to hopes of the cure of 
a malady through a sharp operation. 

These were matters going on behind the curtain ; as 
wholly vital to her, and with him at times almost as domi- 
nant, as the spiritual in memory, when flesh has left but 
its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten; and all their 
talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions to 
Lakelands, music, public affairs, the pardonable foibles of 
friends created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and 
heroines, exhibitions of pictures, the sorrows of Crowned 
Heads, so serviceable ever to mankind as an admonition to 
the ambitious, a salve to the envious ! — in fine, whatsoever 
can entertain or affect the most social of couples, domesti- 
cally without a care to appearance. And so far they par- 
tially — dramatically — deceived themselves by imposing on 
the world while they talked and duetted ; for the purchase 
of furniture from a flowing purse is a cheerful occupation ; 
also a City issuing out of hospital, like this poor City of 
London, inspires good citizens to healthy activity. But the 
silence upon what they were most bent on, had the sinister 
effect upon Victor, of obscuring his mental hold of the 
beloved woman, drifting her away from him. In communi- 
cating Fenellan’s news through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. 
Burman’s intentions, he was aware that there was an 
obstacle to his being huggingly genial, even candidly genial 
with her, until he could deal out further news, corroborative 
and consecutive, to show the action of things as progressive. 
Fenellan had sunk into his usual apathy : — and might plead 
the impossibility of his moving faster than the woman pro- 
fessing to transform herself into beneficence out of malig- 
nity ; — one could hear him saying the words ! Victor had 
not seen him since last Concert evening, and he deemed it 


THE LATEST OF BIJRMAN 


109 


as well to hear the words Fenellan’s mouth had to say. He 
called at an early hour of the Westward tidal flow at the 
Insurance Office looking over the stormy square of the first 
of Seamen. 


CHAPTER XIII 

THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN 

After cursory remarks about the business of the Office 
and his friend’s contributions to periodical literature, in 
which he was interested for as long as he had assurance 
that the safe income depending upon official duties was not 
endangered by them, Victor kicked his heels to and fro. 
Fenellan waited for him to lead. 

Have you seen that man, her lawyer, again ? ” 

‘^I have dined with Mr. Carling: — capital claret.” 

Emptiness was in the reply. 

Victor curbed himself and said : ‘^By the way, you ’re not 
likely to have dealings with Blathenoy. The fellow has a 
screw to the back of a shifty eye ; I see it at work to fix the 
look for business. I shall sit on the Board of my Bank. 
One hears things. He lives in style at Wrensham. By the 
way, Fredi has little Mab Mountney from Creckholt staying 
with her. You said of little Mabsy — ^ Here she comes into 
the room all pink and white, like a daisy.’ She ’s the daisy 
still ; reminds us of our girl at that age. — So, then, we 
come to another dead block ! ” 

^^Well, no; it’s a chemist’s shop, if that helps us on,” 
said Fenellan, settling to a new posture in his chair. 

She ’s there of an afternoon for hours.” 

You mean it ’s she ? ” 

The lady. I ’ll tell you. I have it from Carling, worthy 
man ; and lawyers can be brought to untruss a point over a 
cup of claret. He ’s a bit of a ‘ Mackenzie Man,’ as old aunts 
of mine used to say at home — a Man of Feeling. Thinks he 
knows the world, from having sifted and sorted a lot of our 
dustbins ; as the modern Realists imagine it ’s an exposition 


110 


ONE OF OUE CONQUERORS 


of positive human nature when they’ve pulled down our 
noses to the worst parts — if there ’s a worse where all are 
useful : but the Realism of the dogs is to have us by the 
nose : — excite it, and befoul it, and you ’re fearfully credi- 
ble ! You don’t read that olfactory literature. However, 
friend Carling is a conciliatory carle. Three or four days 
of the week the lady, he says, drives to her chemist’s, and 
there she sits in the shop; round the corner, as you enter; 
and sees all Charing in the shop looking-glass at the back ; 
herself a stranger spectacle, poor lady, if Carling’s picture 
of her is not overdone; with her fashionable no-bonnet 
striding the contribution chignon on the crown, and a huge 
square green shade over her forehead. Sits hours long, and 
cocks her ears at orders of applicants for drugs across the 
counter, and sometimes catches wind of a prescription, and 
consults her chemist, and thinks she ’ll try it herself. It ’s 
a basket of medicine bottles driven to Regent’s Park pretty 
well every day.” 

‘‘Ha! Regent’s Park!” exclaimed Victor, and shook at 
recollections of the district and the number of the house, 
dismal to him. London buried the woman deep until a 
mention of her sent her flaring over London. “A chemist’s 
shop! She sits there ? ” 

“ Mrs. Bur man. We pass by the shop.” 

“ She had always a turn for drugs. — ISTot far from here, 
did you say ? And every day ! under a green shade ? ” 

“ Dear fellow, don’t be suggesting ballads ; we ’ll go now,” 
said Fenellan. “It’s true it’s like sitting on the banks of 
the Stygian waters.” 

He spied at an obsequious watch, that told him it was 
time to quit the office. 

“ You ’ve done nothing ? ” Victor asked in a tone of no 
expectation. 

“ Only to hear that her latest medical man is Themison.” 

“ Where did you hear ? ” 

“Across the counter of Boyle and Luck wort, the lady’s 
chemists. I called the day before yesterday, after you were 
here at our last Board Meeting.” 

“ The Themison? ” 

“ The great Dr. Themison ; who kills you kindlier than 
most, and is much in request for it.” 


THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN 


111 


There one of your echoes of Colney ! ’’ Victor cried. 
<^One gets dead sick of that worn-out old jibeing at doctors. 
They don’t kill, you know very well. It’s not to their 
interest to kill. They may take the relish out of life ; and 
upon my word, I believe that helps to keep the patient 
living ! ” 

Fenellan sent an eye of discreet comic penetration travel- 
ling through his friend. 

The City ’s mending ; it ’s not the weary widow woman 
of the day when we capsized the diurnal with your royal 
Old Veuve,” he said, as they trod the pavement. Funny 
people, the English! They give you all the prinieing 
possible for amusement and jollity, and devil a sentry-box 
for the exercise of it ; and if you shake a leg publicly, 
partner or not, you’re marched off to penitence. I com- 
plain, that they have no philosophical appreciation of 
human nature.” 

We pass the shop ? ” Victor interrupted him. 

You ’re in view of it in a minute. And what a square, 
for recreative dancing! And what a people, to be turning 
it into a place of political agitation ! And what a country, 
where from morning till night it ’s an endless wrangle 
about the first conditions of existence ! Old Colney seems 
right now and then : — they ’re the offspring of pirates, and 
they’ve got the manners and tastes of their progenitors, 
and the trick of quarrelling everlastingl}^ over the booty. 
I ’d have band-music here for a couple of hours, three days 
of the week at the least ; and down in the East ; and that 
forsaken North quarter of London; and the Baptist South, 
too. But just as those omnibus-wheels are the miserable 
music of this London of ours, it ’s only too sadly true that 
the people are in the first rumble of the notion of the 
proper way to spend their lives. Now you see the shop : 
Boyle and Luckwort : there.” 

Victor looked. He threw his coat open, and pulled the 
waistcoat, and swelled it, ahemming. That shop ? ” said 
he. And presently: Fenellan, I’m not superstitious, I 
think. Now listen; I declare to you, on the day of our 
drinking Old Veuve together last — you remember it, — I 
walked home up this way across the square, and I was about 
to step into that identical shop, for some household prescrip- 


112 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


tion in my pocket, having forgotten Nataly’s favourite City 
chemists Fenhird and Jay, when — I hn stating a fact — I 
distinctly — I’m sure of the shop — felt myself plucked 
back by the elbow ; pulled back : the kind of pull when you 
have to put a foot backward to keep your equilibrium.” 

So does memory inspired by the sensations contribute an 
additional item for the colouring of history. 

He touched the elbow, showed a flitting face of crazed 
amazement in amusement, and shrugged and half-laughed, 
dismissing the incident, as being perhaps, if his hearer chose 
to have it so, a gem of the rubbish tumbled into the dust- 
cart out of a rather exceptional householder’s experience. 

Fenellan smiled indulgently. Queer things happen. I 
recollect reading in my green youth of a clergyman, who 
mounted, a pulpit of the port where he was landed after his 
almost solitary rescue from a burning ship at midnight in 
mid-sea, to inform his congregation, that he had overnight 
of the catastrophe a personal Warning right in his ear from 
a Voice, when at his bed or bunk-side, about to perform the 
beautiful ceremony of undressing : and the Eev. gentleman 
was to lie down in his full uniform, not so much as to relieve 
himself of his hoots, the Voice insisted twice; and he obeyed 
it, despite the discomfort to his poor feet ; and he jumped 
up in his boots to the cry of Fire, and he got them providen- 
tially over the scuffling deck straight at the first rush into 
the boat awaiting them, and had them safe on and polished 
the day he preached the sermon of gratitude for the special 
deliverance. There was a Warning ! and it might well be 
called, as he called it, from within. We ’re cared for, never 
doubt. Aide-toi. Be ready dressed to help yourself in a 
calamity, or you ’ll not stand in boots at your next Sermon, 
contrasting with the burnt. That sounds like the moral.” 

She could have seen me,” Victor threw out an irritable 
suggestion. The idea of the recent propinquity set hatred 
in motion. 

Scarcely likely. I ’m told she sits looking on her lap, 
under the beetling shade, until she hears an order for 
tinctures or powders, or a mixture that strikes her fancy. 
It ’s possible to do more suicidal things than sit the after- 
noons in a chemist’s shop and see poor creatures get their 
different passports to Orcus.” 


THE LATEST OF MES. BTJEJVIAN 


113 


Victor stepped mutely beneath the windows of the bellied 
glass-urns of chemical wash. The woman might be inside 
there now! She might have seen his figure in the shop- 
mirror ! And she there ! The wonder of it all seemed to 
be, that his private history was not walking the streets. 
The thinness of the partition concealing it, hardly guar- 
anteed a day’s immunity : — because this woman would live 
in London, in order to have her choice of a central chemist’s 
shop, where she could feed a ghastly imagination on the 
various recipes . . . and while it would have been so much 
healthier for her to be living in a recess of the country ! 

He muttered : Diseases — drugs I ” 

Those were the corresponding two strokes of the pendu- 
lum which kept the woman going. 

^^And deadly spite.” That was the emanation of the 
monotonous horrible conflict, for which, and by which, the 
woman lived. 

In the neighbourhood of the shop, he could not but 
think of her through the feelings of a man scorched by a 
furnace. 

A little further on, he said : Poor soul I ” He con- 
fessed to himself, that latterly he had, he knew not why, 
been impatient with her, rancorous in thought, as never 
before. He had hitherto aimed at a picturesque tolerance 
of her vindictiveness ; under suffering, both at Craye* and 
Creckholt ; and he had been really forgiving. He accused 
her of dragging him down to humanity’s lowest. 

But if she did that, it argued the possession of a power 
of a sort. 

Her station in the chemist’s shop he passed almost daily, 
appeared to him as a sudden and a terrific rush to the 
front; though it was only a short drive from the house in 
Kegent’s Park ; but having shaken-off that house, he had 
pushed it back into mists, obliterated it. The woman 
certainly had a power. 

He shot away to the power he knew of in himself ; his 
capacity for winning men in bodies, the host of them, when 
it came to an effort of his energies : men and, individually, 
women. Individually, the women were to be counted on as 
well ; warm supporters. 

It was the admission of a doubt that he might expect 

8 


114 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


to enroll them collectively. Eyeing the men, he felt his 
command of them. Glancing at congregated women, he 
had a chill. The Wives and Spinsters in ghostly judicial 
assembly : that is, the phantom of the offended collective 
woman : that is, the regnant Queen Idea issuing from our 
concourse of civilized life to govern Society, and pronounce 
on the orderly, the tolerable, the legal, and banish the 
rebellious : these maintained an aspect of the stand against 
him. 

Did Nataly read the case : namely,, that the crowned 
collective woman is not to be subdued ? And what are we 
to say of the indefinite but forcible Authority, when we see 
it upholding Mrs. Burman to crush a woman like Nataly ! 

Victor’s novel exercises in reflection w^ere bringing him 
by hard degrees to conceive it to be the Impalpable which 
has prevailing weight. Not many of our conquerors have 
scored their victories on the road of that index : nor has 
duration been granted them to behold the minute measure 
of value left even tangible after the dust of the conquest 
subsides. The passing by a shop where a broken old 
woman might be supposed to sit beneath her green fore- 
head-shade — Venetian-blind of a henbane-visage ! — had 
precipitated him into his first real grasp of the abstract 
verity : and it opens on to new realms, which are a new 
world to the practical mind. But he made no advance. 
He stopped in a fever of sensibility, to contemplate the 
powerful formless vapour rolling from a source that was 
nothing other than yonder weak lonely woman. 

In other words, the human nature of the man was 
dragged to the school of its truancy by circumstances, for 
him to learn the commonest of sums done on a slate, in 
regard to payment of debts and the unrelaxing grip of the 
creditor on the defaulter. Debtors are always paying: 
like those who are guilty of the easiest thing in life, the 
violation of Truth, they have made themselves bondmen 
to pay, if not in substance, then in soul ; and the nipping 
of the soul goes on for as long as the concrete burden is 
undischarged. You know the Liar; you must have seen 
him diminishing, until he has become a face without fea- 
tures, withdrawn to humanity’s preliminary sketch (some 
half-dozen frayed threads of woeful outline on our original 


5’HE LATEST OF MRS. BCRMAN ll6 

tapestry-web) ; and he who did the easiest of things, he must 
from such time sweat in being the prodigy of inventive 
nimbleness, up to the day when he propitiates Truth by 
telling it again. There is a repentance that does reconsti- 
tute ! It may help to the traceing to springs of a fable 
whereby men have been guided thus far out of the wood. 

Victor would have said truly that he loved Truth ; that 
he paid every debt with a scrupulous exactitude : money, 
of course ; and prompt apologies for a short brush of his 
temper. Nay, he had such a conscience for the smallest 
eruptions of a transient, irritability, that the wish to say a 
friendly mending word to the Fimctilio donkey of London 
Bridge, softened his retrospective view of the fall there, 
more than once. Although this man was a presentation to 
mankind of the force in Nature which drives to unresting 
speed, which is the vitality of the heart seen at its beating 
after a plucking of it from the body, he knew himself for 
the reverse of lawless ; he inclined altogether to good citi- 
zenship. So social a man could not otherwise incline. But 
when it came to the examination of accounts between Mrs. 
Burman and himself, spasms of physical revulsion, loath- 
ings, his excessive human nature, put her out of Court. To 
men, it was impossible for him to speak the torments of 
those days of the monstrous alliance. The heavens were 
cognizant. He pleaded his case in their accustomed hear- 
ing : — a youngster tempted by wealth, attracted, besought, 
snared, revolted, &c. And Mrs. Burman, when roused to 
jealousy, had shown it by teasing him for a confession of 
his admiration of splendid points in the beautiful Nataly, 
the priceless fair woman living under their roof, a contrast 
of very life with the corpse and shroud ; and she seen by 
him daily, singing with him, her breath about him, her 
voice incessantly upon every chord of his being! 

He pleaded successfully. But the silence following the 
verdict was heavy ; the silence contained an unheard thunder. 
It was the sound, as when out of Court the public is dis- 
satisfied with a verdict. Are we expected to commit a social 
outrage in exposing our whole case to the public ? — Imagine 
it for a moment as done. Men are ours at a word — or at 
least a word of invitation. Women we woo : fluent smooth 
versions of our tortures, mixed with permissible courtship, 


Il6 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 

win the individual woman. And that unreasoning collective 
woman, icy, deadly, condemns the poor racked wretch who 
so much as remembers them ! She is the enemy of Nature. 

— Tell us how ? She is the slave of existing conventions. — 
And from what cause ? She is the artificial production of 
a state that exalts her so long as she sacrifices daily and 
hourly to the artificial. 

Therefore she sides with Mrs. Bur man — the foe of 
Nature : who, with her arts and gold lures, has now posses- 
sion of the Law (the brass idol worshipped by the collec- 
tive) to drive Nature into desolation. 

He placed himself to the right of Mrs. Burman, for the 
world to behold the couple : and he lent the world a sigh 
of disgust. 

What he could not do, as in other matters he did, was to 
rise above the situation, in a splendid survey and rapid view 
of the means of reversing it. He was too social to be a 
captain of the socially insurgent ; imagination expired. 

But having a courageous Nataly to second him! — how 
then? It was the succour needed. Then he would have 
been ready to teach the world that Nature — honest Nature 

— is more to be prized than Convention : a new ^ra might 
begin. 

The thought was tonic for an instant and illuminated him 
springingly. It sank, excused for the flaccidity by Nataly’s 
want of common adventurous daring. She had not taken 
to Lakelands ; she was purchasing furniture from a flowing 
purse with a heavy heart ‘ — unfeminine, one might say ; she 
preferred to live obscurely ; she did not, one had to think — 
but it was unjust : and yet the accusation, that she did not 
cheerfully make a strain and spurt on behalf of her child, 
pressed to be repeated. 

These short glimpses at reflection in Victor were like the 
verberant twang of a musical instrument that has had a 
smart blow, and wails away independent of the player’s 
cunning hand. He w^ould have said, that he was more his 
natural self when the cunning hand played on him, to make 
him praise and uplift his beloved : mightily would it have 
astonished him to contemplate with assured perception in 
his own person the Nature he invoked. But men invoking 
Nature, do not find in her the Holy Mother she in such case 


THE LATEST OP MRS. BURMA]^ 


117 


becomes to her daughters, whom she so persecutes. Men 
call on her for their defence, as a favourable witness : she 
is a note of their rhetoric. They are not bettered by 
her sustainment : they have not, as women may have, 
her enaemic aid at a trying hour. It is not an effort at 
epigram to say, that whom she scourges most she most 
supports. 

All Opera-placard drew his next remark to Fenellan. 

How Wagner seems to have stricken the Italians ! Well, 
now, the Germans have their emperor to head their armies, 
and I say that the German emperor has done less for their 
lasting fame and influence than Wagner has done. He has 
affected the French too ; I trace him in Gounod’s Romeo 
et Juliette — and we donT gain by it; we have a poor 
remuneration for the melody gone ; think of the little 
shepherd’s pipeing in Mireille ; and there ’s another in Sapho 
— delicious. I held out against Wagner as long as I could. 
The Italians don’t much more than Wagnerize in exchange 
for the loss of melody. They would be wiser in going back 
to Pergolese, Carnpagnole. The Mejistojile was good * — of 
the school of the foreign master. Aida and Otello, no. I 
confess to a weakness for the old barley-sugar of Bellini 
or a Donizetti-Serenade. Are n’t you seduced by cadences ? 
Never mind Wagner’s tap of his paedagogue’s bdton — a 
cadence catches me still. Early taste for barley-sugar, per- 
haps ! There ’s a march in Verdi’s Attila and I Lomhardi, 
I declare I ’m in military step when I hear them, as in the 
old days, after leaving the Opera. Fredi takes little Mab 
Mountney to her first Opera to-night. Enough to make us 
old ones envious ! You remember your first Opera, Fenel- 
lan ? Sonnamhula, with me. I tell you, it would task the 
highest poetry — say, require, if you like — showing all 
that ’s noblest, splendidest, in a young man, to describe its 
effect on me. I was dreaming of my box at the Opera for 
a year after. The Huguenots to-night. Not the best suited 
for little Mabsy ; but she ’ll catch at the Rataplan, Capital 
Opera; we used to think it the best, before we had Tann- 
hailser and Lohengrin and the MeistersingerP 

Victor hinted notes of the Conspiration Scene closing the 
Third Act of the Huguenots, That sombre Chorus brought 
Mrs. Bur man before him. He drummed the Rataplan^ which 


118 


ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


sent her flying. The return of a lively disposition for din- 
ner and music completed his emancipation from the yoke of 
the baleful creature sitting half her days in the chemist’s 
shop ; save that a thought of drugs brought the smell, and 
the smell the picture ; she threatened to be an apparition at 
any amount pervading him through his nostrils. He spoke 
to Fenellan of hunger for dinner, a need for it; singular in 
one whose appetite ran to the stroke of the hour abreast 
with Armandiiie’s kitchen-clock. Fenellan proposed a glass 
of sherry and bitters at his Club over the way. He had 
forgotten the shower of black balls (attributable to the con- 
jurations of old Ate) on a certain past day. Without word 
of refusal, Victor entered a wine-merchant’s office, where he 
was unknown, and stating his wish for bitters and dry 
sherry, presently received the glass, drank, nodded to the 
administering clerk, named the person whom he had obliged 
and refreshed, and passed out, remarking to Fenellan: 
^^Colney on Clubs! he’s right; they’re the mediaeval in 
modern times, our Baron’s castles, minus the Baron; dead 
against public life and social duties. Business excuses my 
City Clubs ; but I shall take my name off my Club up 
West.” 

More like monasteries, with a Committee for Abbot, and 
Whist for the services,” Fenellan said. ‘‘Or tabernacles 
for the Chosen, and Grangousier playing Divinity behind 
the veil. Well, they ’re social.” 

“ Sectionally social, means anything but social, my friend. 
However — and the monastery had a bell for the wanderer ! 
Say, I ’m penniless or poundless, up and down this walled 
desert of a street, 1 feel, I must feel, these palaces — if 
we’re Christian, not Jew^s: not that the Jews are unchari- 
table; they set an example, in fact. ...” 

He rambled, amusingly to the complacent hearing of 
Fenellan, wdio thought of his pursuit of wealth and grand 
expenditure. 

Victor talked as a man having his mind at leaps beyond 
the subject. He was nearing to the Idea he had seized and 
lost on London Bridge. 

The desire for some good news wherewith to inspirit 
Nataly, withdrew him from his ineffectual chase. He had 
nought to deliver ; on the contrary, a meditation concerning 


DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 119 


her comfort pledged him to concealment : which was the no 
step, or passive state, most abhorrent to him. 

He snatched at the name of Themison. 

With Dr. Themison fast in his grasp, there was a report 
of progress to be made to Hataly; and not at all an empty 
report. 

Themison, then : he leaned on Themison. The woman’s 
doctor should have an influence approaching to authority 
with her. 

Land-values in the developing Colonies, formed his theme 
of discourse to Fenellan : let Banks beware. 

Fenellan saw him shudder and rub the back of his head. 

Feel the wind ? ” he said. 

Victor answered him with that humane thrill of the deep 
tones, which at times he had : No : don’t be alarmed ; I 
feel the devil. If one has wealth and a desperate wish, he 
will speak. All he does, is to make me more charitable to 
those who give way to him. I believe in a devil.” 

Horns and tail ? ” 

^‘Bait and hook.” 

I have n’t wealth, and I wish only for dinner,” Fenellan 
said. 

‘‘You know that Armandine is never two minutes late. 
By the way, you have n’t wealth — you have me.” 

“And I thank God for you!” said Fenellan, acutely 
reminiscent of his having marked the spiritual adviser of 
Mrs. Burman, the Eev. Groseman Buttermore, as a man 
who might be useful to his friend. 


CHAPTER XIV 

DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 

A FORTNIGHT later, an extremely disconcerting circum- 
stance occurred: Armandine was ten minutes behind the 
hour with her dinner. But the surprise and stupefaction 
expressed by Victor, after glances at his watch, were not 
so profound as Fenellan’s, on finding himself exchangeing 


120 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the bow with a gentleman bearing the name of Dr. Themi- 
son. His friend’s rapidity in pushing the combinations 
he conceived, was known : Fenellan^s wonder was not 
so much that Victor had astonished him again, as that he 
should be called upon again to wonder at his astonishment. 
He did; and he observed the doctor and Victor and Nataly : 
aided by dropping remarks. Before the evening was 
over, he gathered enough of the facts, and had to speculate 
only on the designs. Dr. Themison had received a visit ' 
from the husband of Mrs. Victor Kadnor concerning her 
state of health. At an interview with the lady, laughter 
greeted him; he was confused by her denial of the impu- 
tation of a single ailment: but she, to recompose him, 
let it be understood, that she was anxious about her hus- 
band’s condition, he being certainly overworked; and the 
husband’s visit passed for a device on the part of the wife. 
She admitted a willingness to try a change of air, if it was 
deemed good for her husband. Change of air was pre- 
scribed to each for both. Why not drive to Paris ? ” the 
doctor said, and Victor was taken with the phrase. 

He told Penellan at night that Mrs. Burman, he had 
heard, was by the sea, on the South coast. Which of her 
maladies might be in the ascendant, he did not know. 
He knew little. He fancied that Dr. Themison was un- 
suspicious of the existence of a relationship between him 
and Mrs. Burman; and Penellan opined, that there had 
been no communication upon private affairs. What, then, 
was the object in going to Dr. Themison? He treated her 
body merely; whereas the Rev. Groseman Buttermore 
could be expected to impose upon her conduct. Penellan 
appreciated his own discernment of the superior uses to 
which a spiritual adviser may be put, and he too agreeabl}^ 
flattered himself for the corrective reflection to ensue, that 
he had not done anything. It disposed him to think a 
happy passivity more sagacious than, a restless activity. 
We should let Fortune perform her part at the wheel in 
working out her ends, should we not ? — for, ten to one, 
nine times out of ten we are thwarting her if we stretch 
out a hand. And with the range of enjoyments possessed 
by Victor, why this unceasing restlessness ? Why, when 
we are not near drowning, catch at apparent straws, which 


' DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 121 

may be instruments having sharp edges ? Themison, as 
Mrs. Barman’s medical man, might tell the lady tales that 
would irritate her bag of venom. 

Karely though Fenellan was the critic on his friend, the 
shadow cast over his negligent hedonism by Victor’s 
boiling pressure, drove him into the seat of judgement. 
As a consequence, he was rather a dull table-guest in the 
presence of Dr. Themison, whom their host had pricked 
to anticipate high entertainment from him. He did noth- 
ing to bridge the crevasse and warm the glacier air at table 
when the doctor, anecdotal intentionally to draw him out, 
related a decorous but pungent story of one fair member of 
a sweet new sisterhood in agitation against the fixed estab- 
lishment of our chain-mail marriage-tie. An anecdote of 
immediate diversion was wanted, expected: and Fenellan 
sat stupidly speculating upon whether the doctor knew 
of a cupboard locked. So that Dr. Themison was carried 
on by Lady Grace Halley’s humorous enthusiasm for the 
subject to dilate and discuss and specify, all in the irony 
of a judicial leaning to the side of the single-minded 
social adventurers, under an assumed accord with his 
audience; concluding: So there ’s an end of Divorce.” 

‘‘By the trick of multiplication,” Fenellan, now reas- 
sured, was content to say. And that did not extinguish 
the cracker of a theme; handled very carefully, as a thing 
of fire, it need scarce be remarked, three young women 
being present. 

Nataly had eyes on her girl, and was pleased at an 
alertness shown by Mr. Sowerby to second her by cross- 
ing the dialogue. As regarded her personal feelings, she 
was hardened, so long as the curtains were about her to 
keep the world from bending black brows of inquisition 
upon one of its culprits. But her anxiety was vigilant 
to guard her girl from an infusion of any of the dread 
facts of life not coming through the mother’s lips : and 
she was a woman having the feminine mind’s pudency in 
that direction, which does not consent to the revealing of 
much. Here was the mother’s dilemma: her girl — 
Victor’s girl, as she had to think in this instance, — the 
most cloudless of the young women of earth, seemed, and 
might be figured as really, at the falling of a crumb off 


122 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the table of knowledge, taken by the brain to shoot up to 
terrific heights of surveyal; and there she rocked; and 
only her youthful healthiness brought her down to grass 
and flowers. She had once or twice received the electrical 
stimulus, to feel and be as lightning, from a seizure of 
facts in intinitesimal doses, guesses caught off maternal 
evasions or the circuitous explanation of matters touching 
sex in here and there a newspaper, harder to repress com- 
pletely than sewer-gas in great cities: and her mother had 
seen, with an apprehensive pang of anguish, how wither- 
ingly the scared young intelligence of the innocent crea- 
ture shocked her sensibility. She foresaw the need to 
such a flameful soul, as bride, wife, woman across the 
world, of the very princeliest of men in gifts of strength, 
for her sustainer and guide. And the provident mother 
knew this peerless gentleman: but he had his wife. 

Delusions and the pain of the disillusioning were to be 
feared for the imaginative Kesta; though not so much as 
that on some future day of a perchance miserable yoke- 
mating — a subjection or an entanglement — the nobler 
passions might be summoned to rise for freedom, and 
strike a line to make their logically estimable sequence 
from a source not honourable before the public. Con- 
stantly it had to be thought, that the girl was her father’s 
child. 

At present she had no passions; and her bent to the 
happiness she could so richly give, had drawn her sailing 
smoothly over the harbour-bar of maidenhood; where 
many of her sisters are disconcerted to the loss of sim- 
plicity. If Nataly with her sleepless watchfulness and 
forecasts partook of the French mother, Nesta’s Arcadian 
independence likened her somewhat in manner to the 
Transatlantic version of the English girl. Her high 
physical animation and the burden of themes it plucked 
for delivery carried her flowing over impediments of 
virginal self-consciousness, to set her at her ease in the 
talk with men; she had not gone through the various 
Nursery exercises in dissimulation ; she had no appearance 
of praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being 
woman; and no tricks of lips or lids, or traitor scarlet on 
the cheeks, or assumptions of the frigid mask, or indi- 


DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 123 

cateci reserve-cajoleries. I^either ignorantly nor advisedly 
did she play on these or other bewitching strings of her 
sex, after the fashion of the stamped innocents, who are 
the boast of Englishmen and matrons, and thrill societies 
with their winsome ingenuousness; and who sometimes 
when unguarded meet an artful serenade!*, that is a cloaked 
bandit, and is provoked by their performances, and knows 
anthropologically the nature behind the devious show; a 
sciential rascal; as little to be excluded from our modern 
circles as Eve’s own old deuce from Eden’s garden : where- 
upon, opportunity inviting, both the fool and the cunning, 
the pure donkey princess of insular eulogy, and the sham 
one, are in a perilous pass. 

Damsels of the swiftness of mind of Nesta cannot be 
ignorant utterly amid a world where the hints are hourly 
scattering seed of the inklings; when vileness is not at 
work up and down our thoroughfares, proclaiming its 
existence with tableau and trumpet. Nataly encountered 
her girl’s questions, much as one seeks to quiet an enemy. 
The questions had soon ceased. Excepting repulsive and 
rejected details, there is little to be learnt when a little is 
known : in populous communities, density only will keep 
the little out. Only stupidity will suppose that it can be 
done for the livelier young. English mothers forethought- 
ful for their girls, have to take choice of how to do battle 
with a rough-and-tumble Old England, that lumbers bump- 
ing along, craving the precious things, which can be had 
but in semblance under the conditions allowed by laziness 
to subsist, and so curst of its shifty inconsequence as to 
worship in the concrete an hypocrisy it abhors in the 
abstract. Nataly could smuggle or confiscate here and 
there a newspaper; she could not interdict or withhold 
every one of them, from a girl ardent to be in the race on 
all topics of popular interest: and the newspapers are 
occasionally naked savages; the streets are imperfectly 
garmented even by day; and we have our stumbling social 
anecdotist, our spout-mouthed young man, our eminently 
silly woman; our slippery one; our slimy one, the Rahab 
of Society; not to speak of Mary the maid and the footman 
William. A vigilant mother has to contend with these 
and the like in an increasing degree. How best ? 


124 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


There is a method : one that Colney Durance advocated. 
The girPs intelligence and sweet blood invited a trial of it. 
Since, as he argued, we cannot keep the poisonous matter 
out, mothers should prepare and strengthen young women 
for the encounter with it, by lifting the veil, baring the 
world, giving them knowledge to arm them for the fight 
they have to sustain ; and thereby preserve them further 
from the spiritual collapse which follows the nursing of 
a false ideal of our life in youth : — this being, Colney 
said, the prominent feminine disease of the time, common 
to all our women; that is, all having leisure to shine in 
the sun or wave in the wind as flowers of the garden. 

Whatever there was of wisdom in his view, he spoilt it 
for English hearing, by making use of his dry compressed 
sentences. Besides he was a bachelor; therefore but a 
theorist. And his illustrations of his theory were gro- 
tesque; meditation on them extracted a corrosive acid to 
consume, in horrid derision, the sex, the nation, the race 
of man. The satirist too devotedly loves his lash to be a 
persuasive teacher. Nataly had excuses to cover her 
reasons for not listening to him. 

One reason was, as she discerned through her confusion 
at the thought, that the day drew near for her speaking 
fully to Nesta; when, between what she then said and 
what she said now, a cruel contrast might strike the girl : 
and in toneing revelations now, to be more consonant with 
them then ; — in softening and shading the edges of social 
misconduct, it seemed painfully possible to be sowing in 
the girPs mind something like the reverse of moral pre- 
cepts, even to smoothing the way to a rebelliousness partly 
or wholly similar to her own. But Nataly’s chief and her 
appeasing reason for pursuing the conventional system 
with this exceptional young creature, referred to the 
sentiments on that subject of the kind of young man whom 
a mother elects from among those present and eligible, as 
perhaps next to worthy to wed the girl, by virtue of 
good promise in the moral de])artment. She had Mr. 
Dudley Sowerby under view; far from the man of her 
choice: and still the practise of decorum, discretion, a 
pardonable fastidiousness, appears, if women may make 
any forecast of the behaviour of young men or may trust 


DISCLOSES A STAGE OK THE DRIVE TO PARIS 125 

the faces they see, to promise a future stability in the 
husband. Assuredly a Dudley Sowerby would be im- 
mensely startled to find in his bride a young woman more 
than babily aware of the existence of one particular form 
of naughtiness on earth. 

Victor was of no help: he had not an idea upon the 
right education of the young of the sex. Eepression and 
mystery, he considered wholesome for girls; and he con- 
sidered the enlightening of them — to some extent — a pru- 
dential measure for their defence; and premature instruc- 
tion is a fire-water to their wild-in-woods understanding; 
and histrionic innocence is no doubt the bloom on corrup- 
tion; also the facts of current human life, in the crude of 
the reports or the cooked of the sermon in the newspaper^, 
are a noxious diet for our daughters ; whom nevertheless 
we cannot hope to be feeding always on milk : and there 
is a time when their adorable pretty ignorance, if credibly 
it exists out of noodledom, is harmful: — but how beauti- 
ful the shining simplicity of our dear young English girls ! 
— He was one of the many men to whose minds women 
come in pictures and are accepted much as they paint 
themselves. Like his numerous fellows, too, he required 
a conflict with them, and a worsting at it, to be taught, 
that they are not the mere live stock we scheme to dispose 
of for their good: — unless Love should interpose, he would 
have exclaimed. He broke from his fellows in his holy 
horror of a father’s running counter to love. Nesta had 
only to say, that she loved another, for Dudley Sowerby 
to be withdrawn into the background of aspirants. But 
love was unknown to the girl. 

Outwardly, the plan of the Drive to Paris had the look 
of Victor’s traditional hospitality. Nataly smiled at her 
incorrigibly lagging -intelligence of him, on hearing that 
he had invited a company : Lady Grace, for gaiety ; 
Peridon and Catkin, fiddles; Dudley Sowerby and myself, 
flutes; Barinby, intonation; in all, nine of us; and by 
the dear old Normandy route, for the sake of the voyage, 
as in old times; towers of Dieppe in the morning-light; 
and the lovely road to the capital! Just three days in 
Paris, and home by any of the other routes. It ’s the drive 
we want. Boredom in wet weather, we defy ; we have our 


1^6 OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 

Concert — an hour at night and we ^re sure of sleep.” It 
had a sweet simple air, befitting him ; as when in bygone 
days they travelled with the joy of children. For trav- 
elling shook Nataly out of her troubles and gave her some- 
thing of the child’s inheritance of the wisdom of life — the 
living ever so little ahead of ourselves ; about as far as the 
fox in view of the hunt. That is the soul of us out for 
novelty, devouring as it runs, an endless feast; and the 
body is eagerly after it, recording the pleasures, a daily 
chase. E-emembrance of them is almost a renewal, anti- 
cipation a revival. She enraptured Victor with glimpses 
of the domestic fun she had ceased to show sign of since 
the revelation of Lakelands. Her only regret was on 
account of the exclusion of Colney Durance from the 
party, because of happy memories associating him with 
the Seine-land, and also that his bilious criticism of his 
countrymen was moderated by a trip to the Continent. 
Fenellan reported Colney to be busy in the act of distill- 
ing one of his Prussic acid essays.” Fenellan would have 
jumped to go. He informed Victor, as a probe, that the 
business of the Life Insurance was at periods ‘Hearfully 
necrological.” Inexplicably, he was not invited. Did it 
mean, that he was growing dull ? He looked inside instead 
of out, and lost the clue. 

His behaviour on the evening of the departure showed 
plainly what would have befallen Mr. Sowerby on the 
expedition, had not he as well as Colney been excluded. 
Two carriages and a cab conveyed the excursionists, as 
they merrily called themselves, to the terminus. They 
were Victor’s guests; they had no trouble, no expense, 
none of the nipper reckonings which dog our pleasures; — 
the state of pure bliss. Fenellan.’s enviousness drove him 
at the Eev. Mr. Barmby until the latter jumped to the 
seat beside Nesta in her carriage. Mademoiselle de Seilles 
and Mr. Sowerby facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the 
carriage behind, heard Nesta’s laugh; which Mr. Barmby 
had thought vacuous, beseeming little girls, that laugh at 
nothings. She questioned Fenellan. 

“Oh,” said he, “I merely mentioned that the Kev. gen- 
tleman carries his musical instrument at the bottom of his 
trunk.” 


DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 127 

She smiled: “And who are in the cab 

“Your fiddles are in the cab, in charge of Peridon and 
Catkin. Those two would have writhed like head and tail 
of a worm, at a division on the way to the station. Point 
a finger at Peridon, you run Catkin through the body. 
They ^re a fabulous couple.” 

Victor cut him short. “I deny that those two are 
absurd.” 

“And Catkin^s toothache is a galvanic battery upon 
Peridon.” 

Nataly strongly denied it. Peridon and Catkin per- 
tained to their genial picture of the dear sweet nest in 
life; a dale never traversed by the withering breath they 
dreaded. 

Fenellan then, to prove that he could be as bad in his 
way as Colney, fell to work on the absent Miss Priscilla 
Graves and Mr. Pempton, with a pitchfork’s exaltation 
of the sacred attachment of the divergently meritorious 
couple, and a melancholy reference to implacable obstacles 
in the principles of each. The pair were offending the 
amatory corner in the generous good sense of Nataly and 
Victor; they were not to be hotly protected, though they 
were well enough liked for their qualities, except by Lady 
Grace, who revelled in the horrifying and scandalizing of 
Miss Graves. Such a specimen of the Puritan middle 
English as Priscilla Graves, was eastwind on her skin, 
nausea to her gorge. She wondered at having drifted into 
the neighbourhood of a person resembling in her repellent 
formal chill virtuousness a windy belfry tower, down 
among those districts of suburban London or appalling 
provincial towns passed now and then with a shudder, 
where the funereal square bricks-up the Church, that 
Arctic hen-mother sits on the square, and the moving dead 
are summoned to their round of penitential exercise by a 
monosyllabic tribulation-bell. Fenellan’s graphic sketch 
of the teetotaller woman seeing her admirer pursued by 
Eumenides flagons — abominations of emptiness — to the 
banks of the black river of suicides, where the one most 
wretched light is Inebriation’s nose; and of the vegetarian 
violoncello’s horror at his vision of the long procession of 
the flocks and herds into his lady’s melodious Ark of a 


128 


ONE OF OtJR CONQITEIIORS 


mouth, excited and delighted her antipathy. She was 
amused to transports at the station, on hearing Mr. Barmby, 
in a voice all ophicleide, remark: “No, I carry no instru- 
ment.’^ The habitation of it at the bottom of his trunk, 
was not forgotten when it sounded. 

Reclining in warmth on the deck of the vessel at night, 
she said, just under Victor’s ear : “ Where are those two ? ” 

^‘Bid me select the couple,” said he. 

She rejoined: ‘‘Silly man;” and sleepily gave him her 
hand for good-night, and so paralyzed his arm, that he 
had to cover the continued junction by saying more than 
he intended : “ If they come to an understanding ! ” 

“Plain enough on one side.” 

“ You think it suitable ? ” 

“Perfection; and well-planned to let them discover it.” 

‘‘ This is really my favourite route ; I love the saltwater 
and the night on deck.” 

“ Go on.” 

“How?” 

“Number your loves. It would tax your arithmetic.” 

“I can hate.” 

“Not me ?” 

Positively the contrary, an impulsive squeeze of fingers 
declared it; and they broke the link, neither of them sen- 
sibly hurt; though a leaf or two of the ingenuities, which 
were her thoughts, turned over in the phantasies of the 
lady ; and the gentleman was taught to feel that a never so 
slightly lengthened compression of the hand female shoots 
within us both straight and far and round the corners. 
There you have Nature, if you want her naked in her ele- 
ments, for a text. He loved his Nataly truly, even fer- 
vently, after the twenty years of union; he looked about 
at no other woman; it happened only that the touch of 
one, the chance warm touch, put to motion the blind forces 
of our mother so remarkably surcharging him. But it was 
without kindling. The lady, the much cooler person, did 
nurse a bit of flame. She had a whimsical liking for the 
man who enjoyed simple things when commanding the 
luxuries; and it became a fascination, by extreme con- 
trast, at the reminder of his adventurous enterprises in 
progress while he could so childishly enjoy. Women who 


DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS 129 

dance with the warrior-winner of battles, and hear him 
talk his ball-room trifles to amuse, have similarly a smell 
of gunpowder to intoxicate them. 

For him, a turn on the deck brought him into new skies. 
Nataly lay in the cabin. She used to be where Lady Grace 
was lying. A sort of pleadable, transparent, harmless 
hallucination of the renewal of old service induced him to 
refresh and settle the fair semi-slumberer’s pillow, and 
fix the tarpaulin over her silks and wraps; and bend his 
head to the soft mouth murmuring thanks. The women 
who can dare the nuit blanche^ and under stars ; and have 
a taste for holiday larks after their thirtieth, are rare; 
they are precious. Nataly nevertheless was approved for 
guarding her throat from the nightwind. And a softer 
southerly breath never crossed Channel ! The very breeze 
he had wished for ! Luck was with him. 

Nesta sat by the rails of the vessel beside her Louise. 
Mr. Sowerby in passing, exchanged a description of 
printed agreement with her, upon the beauty of the night 
— a good neutral topic for the encounter of the sexes : 
not that he wanted it neutral; it furnished him with a 
vocabulary. Once he perceptibly washed his hands of 
dutiful politeness, in addressing Mademoiselle de Seilles, 
likewise upon the* beauty of the night; and the French 
lady, thinking — too conclusively from the breath on the 
glass at the moment, as it is the Gallic habit — that if her 
dear Nesta must espouse one of the uninteresting creatures 
called men in her native land, it might as well be this as 
another, agreed that the night was very beautiful. 

‘^He speaks grammatical French,” Nesta commented on 
his achievement. ^^He contrives in his walking not to wet 
his boots,” mademoiselle rejoined. 

Mr. Peridon was a more welcome sample of the islanders, 
despite an inferior pretension to accent. He burned to be 
near these ladies, and he passed them but once. His 
enthusiasm for Mademoiselle de Seilles was notorious. 
Gratefully the compliment was acknowledged by her, in 
her demure fashion; with a reserve of comic intellectual 
contempt for the man who could not see that women , or 
Frenchwomen, or eminently she among them, must have 
enthusiasm set springing in the breast before they 
9 


130 


OKE OF OXTR CONQUEROBS 


can be swayed by the most violent of outer gales. And 
say, that she is uprooted; — he does but roll a log. Mr. 
Peridon’s efforts to perfect himself in the French tongue 
touched her. 

A night of May leaning on June, is little more than a 
deliberate wink of the eye of light. Mr. Barmby, an exile 
from the ladies by reason of an addiction to tobacco, 
quitted the forepart of the vessel at the first greying. 
Now was the cloak of night worn threadbare, and grey 
astir for the heralding of gold, day visibly ready to show 
its warmer throbs. The gentle waves were just a stronger 
grey than the sky, perforce of an interfusion that shifted 
gradations ; they were silken, in places oily grey ; cold to 
drive the sight across their playful monotonousness for 
refuge on any far fisher-sail. 

Miss Kadnor was asleep, eyelids benignly down, lips 
mildly closed. The girPs cheeks held colour to match a 
dawn yet unawakened though born. They were in a nest 
shading amid silks of pale blue, and there was a languid 
flutter beneath her chin, to the catch of the morn-breeze. 
Bacchanal threads astray from a disorderly front-lock of 
rich brown hair were alive over an eyebrow showing like a 
seal upon the lightest and securest of slumbers. 

Mr. Barmby gazed, and devoutly. Both the ladies were 
in their oblivion; the younger quite saintly; but the 
couple inseparably framed, elevating to behold; a reproach 
to the reminiscence of pipes. He was near; and quietly 
the eyelids of mademoiselle lifted on him. Her look was 
grave, straight, uninquiring, soon accurately perusing; an 
arrow of Artemis for penetration. He went by, with the 
sound in the throat of a startled bush-bird taking to wing; 
he limped off some nail of the deck, as if that young 
Frenchwoman had turned the foot to a hoof. Man could 
not be more guiltless, yet her look had perturbed him; 
nails conspired; in his vexation, he execrated tobacco. 
And ask not why, where reason never was. 

Nesta woke babbling on the subject she had relinquished 
for sleep. Mademoiselle touched a feathery finger at her 
hair and hood during their silvery French chimes. 

Mr. Sowerby presented the risen morning to them, with 
encomiums, after they had been observing every variation 


DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DBIVE TO PAKIS 13i 

in it. He spoke happily of the pleasant passage, and of 
the agreeable night; particularly of the excellent idea of 
the expedition by this long route at night; the prospect 
of which had disfigured him with his grimace of specula- 
tion — apparently a sourness that did not exist. Nesta had 
a singular notion, coming of a girl’s mingled observation 
and intuition, that the impressions upon this gentleman 
were in arrear, did not strike him till late. Mademoiselle 
confirmed it when it was mentioned; she remembered to 
have noticed the same in many small things. And it 
was a pointed perception. 

Victor sent his girl down to Nataly, with a summons to 
hurry up and see sunlight over the waters. Nataly came; 
she looked, and the outer wakened the inner, she let the 
light look in on her, her old feelings danced to her eyes 
like a string of bubbles in ascent. “Victor, Victor, it 
seems only yesterday that we crossed, twelve years back 
— was it? — and in May, and saw the shoal of porpoises, 
and five minutes after, Dieppe in view. Dear French 
people! I share your love tor France.” 

“ Home of our holidays ! — the ^ drives ; ’ and they may 
be the happiest. And fifty minutes later we were off the 
harbour; and Natata landed, a stranger; and at night she 
was the heroine of the town.” 

Victor turned to a stately gentleman and passed his name 
to Nataly: “Sir Eodwell Blachington, a neighbour of 
Lakelands.” She understood that Lady Grace Halley was 
acquainted with Sir Kodwell: — hence this dash of brine 
to her lips while she was drinking of happy memories, and 
Victor evidently was pluming himself upon his usual luck 
in the fortuitous encounter with an influential neighbour 
of Lakelands. He told Sir Eodwell the story of how they 
had met in the salle a manger of the hotel the impresario 
of a Concert in the town, who had in his hand the doctor’s 
certificate of the incapacity of the chief cantatrice to ap- 
pear, and waved it, within a step of suicide. “Well, to 
be brief, my wife — ‘ noble dame Anglaise^ ’ as the man 
announced her on the Concert platform, undertook one of 
the songs, and sang another of her own — pure contralto 
voice, as you will say ; with the result that there was a 
perfect tumult of enthusiasm. Next day, the waiters of 


132 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the hotel presented her with a bouquet of Spring flowers, 
white, and central violets. It was in the Paris papers, 
under the heading: Tine amie outre Manche — 1 think 
that was it?’^ he asked Nataly. 

“I forget,’^ said she. 

He glanced at her : a cloud had risen. He rallied her, 
spoke of the old Norman silver cross which the manager 
of the Concert had sent, humbly imploring her to accept 
the small memento of his gratitude. She nodded an ex- 
cellent artificial brightness. 

And there was the coast of France under young sunlight 
over the waters. Once more her oft-petitioning wish 
through the years, that she had entered the ranks of pro- 
fessional singers, upon whom the moral scrutiny is not so 
microscopic, invaded her, resembling a tide-swell into 
rock-caves, which have been filled before and left to empti- 
ness, and will be left to emptiness again. Nataly had the 
intimation visiting us when, in a decline of physical power, 
the mind’s ready vivacity to conjure illusions forsakes us; 
and it was, of a wall ahead, and a force impelling her 
against it, and no hope of deviation. And this is the fea- 
tureless thing. Destiny; not without eyes, if we have a 
conscience to throw them into it to look at us. 

Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others 
on the vessel, from an active breath of the salt prompting 
to healthy hunger; and hardly less from the splendour of 
the low full sunlight on the waters, the skimming and 
dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from under 
the globe of fire. 


CHAPTER XV 

A PATRIOT ABROAD 

Nine days after his master’s departure, Daniel Skepsey, 
a man of some renown of late, as a subject of reports and 
comments in the newspapers, obtained a passport, for the 
identification, if need were, of his missing or misappre- 
hended person in a foreign country, of the language of 


A PATEIOT ABROAD 


133 


which three unpronounceable words were knocking about his 
head to render the thought of the passport a staff of safety; 
and on the morning that followed he was at speed through 
Normandy, to meet his master rounding homeward from 
Paris, at a town not to be spoken as it is written, by reason 
of the custom of the good people of the country, with 
whom we would fain live on neighbourly terms : — yes, and 
they had proof of it, not so very many years back, when 
they were enduring the worst which can befall us : — ■ though 
Mr. Durance, to whom he was indebted for the writing of 
the place of his destination large on a card, and the word- 
ing of the Prench sound beside it, besides the jotting down 
of trains and the station for the change of railways, Mr. 
Durance could say, that the active form of our sympathy 
consisted in the pouring of cheeses upon them when they 
were prostrate and unable to resist ! 

A kind gentleman, Mr. Durance, as Daniel Skepsey had 
recent cause to know, but often exceedingly dark; not so 
patriotic as desireable, it was to be feared; and yet, 
strangely indeed, Mr. Durance had said cogent things on 
the art of boxing and on manly exercises, and he hoped 
— he was emphatic in saying he hoped — we should be 
regenerated. He must have meant, that boxing on a grand 
scale would contribute to it. He said, that a blow now 
and then was wholesome for us all. He recommended a 
monthly private whipping for old gentlemen who decline 
the use of the gloves, to disperse their humours; not ex- 
cluding Judges and Magistrates : — he could hardly be in 
earnest. He spoke in a clergyman’s voice, and said it 
would be payment of good assurance money, beneficial to 
their souls : he seemed to mean it. He said, that old gen- 
tlemen were bottled vapours, and it was good for them to 
uncork them periodically. He said, they should be excused 
half the strokes if they danced nightly — they resented 
motion. He seemed sadly wanting in veneration. 

But he might not positively intend what he said. Skep- 
sey could overlook everything he said, except the girding 
at England. For where is a braver people, notwithstand- 
ing appearances ! Skepsey knew of dozens of gallant 
bruisers, ready for the ery to strip to the belt; worthy, 
with a little public encouragement, to rank beside their 


134 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEROBS 


grandfathers of the Eing, in the brilliant times when royalty 
and nobility countenanced the manly art, our nursery of 
heroes, and there was not the existing unhappy division 
of classes. He still trusted to convince Mr. Durance, by 
means of argument and happy instances, historical and 
immediate, that the English may justly consider them- 
selves the elect of nations, for reasons better than their 
accumulation of the piles of gold — better than “ usurers’ 
reasons,” as Mr. Durance called them. Much that Mr. 
Durance had said at intervals was, although remembered 
almost to the letter of the phrase, beyond his comprehen- 
sion, and he put it aside, with penitent blinking at his 
deficiency. 

All the while, he was hearing a rattle of voluble tongues 
around him, and a shout of stations, intelligible as a wash 
of pebbles, and blocks in a torrent. Generally the men 
slouched when they were not running. At Dieppe he had 
noticed muscular fellows; he admitted them to be nimbler 
on the legs than ours; and that may count both ways, he 
consoled a patriotic vanity by thinking; instantly rebuking 
the thought; for he had read chapters of Military History. 
He sat eyeing the front row of figures in his third-class 
carriage, musing on the kind of soldiers we might, heaven 
designing it, have to face, and how to beat them ; until he 
gazed on Eouen, knowing by the size of it and by what Mr. 
Durance had informed him of the city on the river, that 
it must be the very city of Eouen, not so many years back 
a violated place, at the mercy of a foreign foe. Strong 
pity laid hold of Skepsey. He fortified the heights for 
defence, but saw at a glance that it was the city for 
modern artillery to command, crush and enter. He lost 
idea of these afflicted people as foes, merely complaining 
of their attacks on England, and their menaces in their 
Journals and pamphlets; and he renounced certain views 
of the country to be marched over on the road by this route 
to Paris, for the dictation of terms of peace at the gates of 
the French capital, sparing them the shameful entry; and 
this after the rout of their attempt at an invasion of the 
Island ! 

A man opposite him was looking amicably on his lively 
grey eyes. Skepsey handed a card from his pocket. The 


A PATRIOT ABROAD 


135 


man perused it, and crying : Dreux ? ” waved out of the 
carriage-window at a westerly distance, naming Kouen as 
not the place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, 
that a foreign General, ignorant of the language, must con- 
fine himself to defensive operations at home; he would be 
a child in the hands of the commonest man he meets. 
Brilliant with thanks in signs, Skepsey drew from his 
friend a course of instruction in French names, for our 
necessities on a line of march. The roads to Great Brit- 
ain’s metropolis, and the supplies of forage and provision 
at every stage of a march on London, are marked in the 
military ofiices of these people ; and that, with their bark- 
ing Journals, is a piece of knowledge to justify a belliger- 
ent return for it. Only we pray to be let live peacefully. 

Fervently we pray it when this good man, a total stran- 
ger to us, conducts an ignorant foreigner from one station 
to another through the streets of Eouen, after a short 
stoppage at the buffet and assistance in the identification 
of coins ; then, lifting his cap to us, retires. 

And why be dealing wounds and death ? It is a more 
blessed thing to keep the Commandments. But how is it 
possible to keep the Commandments if you have a vexa- 
tious wife ? 

Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hered- 
itary energy in his crying and coughing; and it was owing, 
he could plead, to her habits and her tongue, that he some- 
times, that he might avoid the doing of worse — for she 
wanted correction and was improved by it — courted the 
excitement of a short exhibition of skill, man to man, on 
publicans’ first floors. He could have told the magistrate 
so, in part apology for the circumstances dragging him. the 
other day, so recently, before his Worship; and he might 
have told it, if he had not remembered Captain Dartrey 
Fenellan’s words about treating women chivalrously: 
which was interpreted by Skepsey as correcting them, 
when called upon to do it, but never exposing them : — 
only, if allowed to account for the circumstances pushing 
us into the newspapers, we should not present so guilty a 
look before the public. 

Furthermore, as to how far it is the duty of a man to 
serve his master, there is likewise question: whether is 


136 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOES 


he, while receiving reproof and punishment for excess of 
zeal in the service of his master, not to mention the welfare 
of the country, morally — without establishing it as a 
principle — exonerated? Miss Graves might be asked: 
save that one would not voluntarily trouble a lady on such 
subjects. But supposing, says the opposing counsel, now 
at work in Skepsey’s conscience, supposing this act, for 
which, contraveneing the law of the land, you are reproved 
and punished, to be agreeable to you, how then? We 
answer, supposing it — and we take uncomplainingly the 
magistrate’s reproof and punishment — morally justified : 
can it be expected of us to have the sense of guilt, al- 
though we wear and know we wear a guilty look before the 
public ? 

His master and the dear ladies would hear of it ; perhaps 
they knew of it now ; with them would rest the settlement 
of the distressing inquiry. The ladies would be shocked : 
ladies cannot bear any semblance of roughness, not even 
with the gloves: — and knowing, .as they must, that our 
practise of the manly art is for their protection ! 

Skepsey’s grievous prospect of the hour to come under 
judgement of a sex that was ever a riddle unread, clouded 
him on the approach to Dreux. He studied the country 
and the people eagerly ; he forbore to conduct great military 
operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round 
about the town of Dreux ; also of a wonderful Mausoleum 
there, not equally interesting. The little man was in deeper 
gloom than a day sobering on crimson dusk when the train 
stopped and his quick ear caught the sound of the station, 
as pronounced by his friend at Kouen. 

He handed his card to the station-master. A glance, and 
the latter signalled to a porter, saying : Paradis ; ” and the 
porter laid hold of Skepsey’s bag. Skepsey’s grasp was 
firm ; he pulled, the porter pulled. Skepsey heard explana- 
tory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back 
with vigour, and in his own tongue explained, that he held 
to the bag because his master’s letters were in the bag, all 
the way from England. For a minute, there was a down- 
right trial of muscle and will : the porter appeared furiously 
excited, Skepsey had a look of cooled steel. Then the 
Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the English- 


A PATRIOT ABROAD 


137 


man^s eccentric obstinacy, and signified that he was his 
guide. Quite so, and Skepsey showed alacrity and con- 
fidence in following ; he carried his bag. But with the re- 
membrance of the kindly serviceable man at Kouen, he 
sought to convey to the porter, that the terms of their 
association were cordial. A waving of the right hand to 
the heavens ratified the treaty on the French side. Nods 
and smiles and gesticulations, with across-Channel vocables, 
as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and back, pleasantly 
beguiled the way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under the 
Mausoleum heights, where Skepsey fumbled at his pocket 
for coin current ; but the Frenchman, all shaken by a tornado 
of negation, clapped him on the shoulder, and sang him a 
quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness to stand listening, and 
blinking, plunged in the contrition of ignorance, eclipsed. 
He took it to signify something to the effect, that money 
should not pass between friends. It was the amatory fare- 
well address of Henri IV. to his Charmante Gahrielle : and 
with — 

“ Perce de mille dards, 

Vhonneur rri'appelle 
Au champ de Mars^"* 

the Frenchman, in a backing of measured steps, apologized 
for his enforced withdrawal from the stranger who had 
captured his heart. 

Skepsey ^s card was taken in the passage of the hotel. A 
clean-capped maid, brave on the legs, like all he had seen 
of these people, preceded iiim at quick march to an upper 
chamber. When he descended, bag in hand, she flung open 
the salon-door of a table d’hote, where a goodly number 
were dining and chattering; waiters drew him along to the 
section occupied by his master’s party. A chair had been 
kept vacant for him ; his master waved a hand, his dear 
ladies graciously smiled ; he stuck the bag in front of a 
guardian foot, growing happy. He could fancy they had 
not seen the English newspapers. And his next observation 
of the table showed him wrecked and lost : Miss Nesta’s 
face was the oval of a woeful 0 at his wild behaviour in 
England during their absence. She smiled. Skepsey had 
nevertheless to consume his food — excellent, very tasty 


138 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


soup — with the sour sauce of the thought that he must be 
tongue-tied in his defence for the time of the dinner. 

‘‘JSTo, dear Skips, please ! you are to enjoy yourself/’ said 
Nesta. 

He answered confusedly, trying to assure her that he was 
doing so, and he choked. 

His master had fixed his arrival for twenty minutes 
earlier. Skepsey spoke through a cough of long delays at 
stations. The Eev. Septimus Barmby, officially peacemaker, 
sounded the consequent excuse for a belated comer. It was 
final ; such is the power of sound. Looks were cast from 
the French section of the table at the owner of the pro- 
digious organ. Some of the younger men, intent on the 
charms of Albion’s daughters, expressed in a sign and a 
word or two alarm at what might be beneath the flooring : 
and ‘‘Fas encore Lui!^^ and “ Son avant-conrier ! ” and other 
flies of speech passed on a whiff, under politest of cover, 
not to give offence. But prodigies claim attention. 

Our English, at the close of the dinner, consented to say 
it was good, without specifying a dish, because a selection 
of this or that would have seemed to italicize, and commit 
them, in the presence of ladies, to a notice of the matter- 
of-course, beneath us, or the confession of a low sensual 
enjoyment ; until Lady Grace Halley named the particular 
dressing of a tete de veau approvingly to Victor ; and he 
stating, that he had offered a suggestion for the menu of 
the day, Nataly exclaimed, that she had suspected it : upon 
which Mr. Sowerby praised the menu, Mr. Barmby, Peridoii 
and Catkin named other dishes, there was the right after- 
dinner ring in Victor’s ears, thanks to the woman of the 
world who had travelled round to nature and led the 
shackled men to deliver themselves heartily. One tap, and 
they are free. That is, in the moments after dinner, when 
nature is at the gates with them. Only, it must be a lady 
and a prevailing lady to give the tap. They need (our 
English) and will for the ages of the process of their trans- 
formation need a queen. 

Skepsey, bag in hand, obeyed the motion of his master’s 
head and followed him. 

He was presently back, to remain with the ladies during 
his master’s perusal of letters. Nataly had decreed that he 


A PATRIOT ABROAD 


139 


was riot to be troubled ; so N’esta and mademoiselle besought 
him for a recital of his French adventures ; and strange to 
say, he had nothing to tell. The journey, pregnant at the 
start, exciting in the course of it, was absolutely blank at 
the termination. French people had been very kind; he 
could not say more. But there was more; there was a 
remarkable fulness, if only he could subordinate it to narra- 
tive. The little man did not know, that time was wanted 
for imagination to make the roadway or riverway of a true 
story, unless we press to invent; his mind had been too 
busy on the way for him to clothe in speech his impressions 
of the passage of incidents at the call for them. Things 
had happened, numbers of interesting minor things, but 
they all slipped as water through the fingers; and he being 
of the band of honest creatures who will not accept a lift 
from fiction, drearily he sat before the ladies, confessing to 
an emptiness he was far from feeling. 

Nesta professed excessive disappointment. “ISTow, if it 
had been in England, Skips ! ’’ she said, under her mother’s 
gentle gloom of brows. 

He made show of melancholy submission. 

There, Skepsey, you have a good excuse, we are sure,” 
Nataly said. 

And women, when they are such ladies as these, are sent 
to prove to us that they can be a blessing ; instead of the 
dreadful cry to Providence for the reason of the spread of 
the race of man by their means ! He declared his readiness, 
rejecting excuses, to state his case to them, but for his fear 
of having it interpreted as an appeal for their kind aid in 
obtaining his master’s forgiveness. Mr. Durance had very 
considerately promised to intercede. Skepsey dropped a 
hint or two of his naughty proceedings drily, aware that 
their untutored antipathy to the manly art would not permit 
of warmth. 

Nesta said: ^^Do you know, Skips, we saw a grand 
exhibition of fencing in Paris.” 

He sighed. Ladies can look on at fencing! foils and 
masks 1 Captain Dartrey Fenellan has shown me, and says, 
the French are our masters at it.” He bowed constrainedly 
to mademoiselle. 

You box, M. Skepsey ! ” she said. 


140 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


His melancholy increased : ^^Much discouragement from 
Government, Society ! If ladies . . . but I do not venture. 
They are not against Games. But these are not a protection 
... to them, when needed ; to the country. The country 
seems asleep to its position. Mr. Durance has remarked on 
it : — though I would not always quote Mr. Durance . . . 
indeed, he says, that England has invested an Old Maid’s 
All in the Millennium, and is ruined if it delays to come. 
‘Old maid,’ I do not see. I do not — if I may presume to 
speak of myself in the same breath with so clever a gentle- 
man, agree with Mr. Durance in everything. But the chest- 
measurement of recruits, the stature of the men enlisted, 
prove that we are losing the nursery of our soldiers.’^ 

“We are taking them out of the nursery, Skips, if you ’re 
for quoting Captain Dartrey,” said Nesta. “We’ll never 
haul down our dag, though, while we have him ! ” 

“ Ah ! Captain Dartrey ! ” Skepsey was refreshed by the 
invocation of the name. 

A summons to his master’s presence cut short something 
he was beginning to say about Captain Dartrey. 


CHAPTER XVI 

ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY’s MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT 
AFFECTED NATALY 

His master opened on the bristling business. 

“ What ’s this, of your name in the papers, your appearing 
before a magistrate, and a fine ? Tell the tale shortly.” 

Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence : the 
modest form of the two hands at rolling play and the head 
deferentially sidecast. But knowing that he had gratified 
his personal tastes in the act of serving his master’s inter- 
ests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into self- 
consciousness ; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a 
simple story. 

“ First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of 
your name beside mine ...” 


SKEPSEY’s MlSCOKDirCT 


141 


‘^Tush: on with you/^ 

Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the 
) case. I read, that there was laughter in the court at my 
i exculpation of my conduct — as I have to call it ; and there 
' may have been. I may have expressed myself. ... I have 
, a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.’’ 

So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell 
j me, that the cause of your gross breach of the law, was a 
consideration for the welfare of the country ? Eun on the 
: facts.” 

^^The facts — I must have begun badly, sir.” Skepsey 
rattled the dry facts in his head to right them. From his 
. not having begun well, they had become dry as things 
underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the senti- 
ments. Two very, two very respectable persons — respect- 
able — were desirous to witness a short display of my, my 
system, I would say ; of my science, they call it.” 

Don’t be nervous. To the point ; you went into a field 
five miles out of London, in broad day, and stood in a ring, 
the usual riff-raff about you ! ” 

With the gloves : ,and not for money, sir : for the trial 
of skill ; not very many people. I cannot quite see the 
breach of the law.” 

So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your 
inability to quite see. And you had to give security.” 

Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir : an 
acquaintance of the magistrate.” 

This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You 
must try to get the better of it — must ! And my name too ! 
I ’m to be proclaimed, as having in my service an inveterate 
pugilist — who breaks the law from patriotism ! Male or 
female, these very respectable persons — the people your 
show was meant for ? ” 

Male,. sir. Females! . . . that is, not the respectable 
: ones.” 

Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your 
\ standard of behaviour in future.” 

, ^‘It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the 
i spectators, that I could be as good as my word. I wished, 
1 I may say, to conciliate him, partly. He would not — he 
r judged by size — credit me with ... he backed my adver- 


142 


OKE OF OTJK CONQITEEOBS 


sary Jerry Scroom — a sturdy boxer, without the knowledge 
of the first principles.’’ 

You beat him ? ” 

I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir ; he 
was complimentary before we parted. He thought I could 
not have lasted. After the second round, the police 
appeared.” 

And you ran ! ” 

^^No, sir; I had nothing on my conscience.” 

<< Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican’s 
room in town, where you could have hammer-nailed and ding- 
donged to your heart’s content for as long as you liked ! ” 

That would have been preferable, from the point of view 
of safety from intrusion, I can admit — speaking humbly. 
But one of the parties — I had a wish to gratify him — is a 
lover of old English times and habits and our country 
scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We 
drove over Hampstead in three carts and a gig, as a com- 
pany of pleasure — as it was. A very beautiful morning. 
There was a rest at a public-house. Mr. Shaplow traces the 
misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it what 
he calls a traitor in the camp. I saw no sign ; we were all 
merry and friendly.” 

‘^Jarniman?” said Victor sharply, ^’Who is the 
Jarniman ? ” 

‘^Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaint 
ance introducing us — a Mr. Shaplow I met in the train 
from Lakelands one day, and again at the corner of a street 
near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by a Mrs. 
Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in 
the shop, and is the mother of Mr. J arniman : he is in a 
confidential place, highly trusted.” Skepsey looked up from 
the hands he soaped: ^^He is a curious mixture; he has 
true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in ghosts. He 
mourns for the lost days of prize-fighting, he thinks that 
spectres are on the increase. He has a very large appetite, 
depressed spirits. Mr. Shaplow informs me he is a man of 
substance, in the service of a wealthy lady in poor health, 
expecting a legacy and her appearance to him. He has the 
look — Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to excess : 
he is a slow drinker.” 


SKEPSEY^S mSCOi^DITCT 


143 


Victor straightened : Bad way of health, you said ? 

‘^Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations as being imme- 
diate : he put it, that he expected her spirit to be out for 
him to meet it any day — or night. He desires it. He 
says, she has promised it — on oath, he says, and must feel 
that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she is 
to appear to him with any countenance after. But he is 
anxious for her in any case to show herself, and says, he 
should not have the heart to reproach her. He has princi- 
ples, a tear for suffering ; he likes to be made to cry. Mrs. 
Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is much the same 
so far, except ghosts ; she will not have them ; except after 
strong tea, they come, she says, come to her bed. She is 
foolish enough to sleep in a close-curtained bed. But the 
poor lady is so exceedingly stout that a puff of cold would 
carry her off, she fears.” 

Victor stamped his foot. ^^This man Jarniman serves 
a lady now in a — serious, does he say ? Was he precise ?” 

^‘Mr. Jarniman spoke of a remarkable number of diseases ; 
very complicated, he says. He has no opinion of doctors. 
He says, that the lady’s doctor and the chemist — she sits in 
a chemist’s shop and swallows other people’s prescriptions 
that take her fancy. He says, her continuing to live is 
wonderful. He has no reason to hurry her, only for the 
satisfaction of a natural curiosity.” 

He mentioned her name ? ” 

No name, sir.” 

Skepsey’s limpid grey eyes confirmed the negative to 
Victor, who was assured that the little man stood clean of 
any falsity. 

‘^You are not on equal terms. You and the magistrate 
have helped him to know who it is you serve, Skepsey.” 

“Would you please to direct me, sir ?” 

“ Another time. Now go and ease your feet wdth a run 
over the town. We have music in half an hour. That you 
like, I know. See chiefly to amusing yourself.” 

Skepsey turned to go ; he murmured, that he had enjoyed 
his trip. 

Victor checked him : it was to ask whether this Jarniman 
had specified one, any one of the numerous diseases afflicting 
his aged mistress. 


144 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles 
for a couple of the foremost maladies assailing the poor 
lady’s decayed constitution : not to be mentioned, Skepsey 
thought, in relation to ladies ; whose organs and functions 
we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting them to 
the sphere so worthily occupied by their mothers up to the 
very oldest date, respectfully curtain ; their accepted masters 
are chivalrous to them, deploring their need at times for the 
doctors and drugs. He stood looking most unhappy. She 
was to appear, sir, in a few — perhaps a week, a month.” 

A nod dismissed him. 

The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had 
wound himself up to relish it) was at night in the towns, 
when the sound of instrumental and vocal music attracted 
crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they heard 
zon^ zon, violoUj flute et hasse ; not bad fluting, excellent 
fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own 
Opera, would have approved. So Victor said of his darlings’ 
voices. Nesta’s and her mother’s were a perfect combina- 
tion ; Mr. Barmby’s trompe in union, sufficiently confirmed 
the popular impression, that they were artistes. They had 
been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expres- 
sions of gratitude, at the departure from Kouen ; and the 
Boniface at Gisors had entreated them to stay another night, 
to give an entertainment. Victor took his pleasure in let- 
ting it be known, that they were a quiet English family, 
simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old England : 
all were welcome to hear them while they were doing it ; 
but they did not give entertainments. 

The pride of the pleasure of reversing the -general idea of 
English dulness among our neighbours, was perceived to 
have laid fast hold of Dudley Sowerby at Dreux. He was 
at the window from time to time, counting heads below. 
For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to supplant the 
flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena 
section of the Meflstofele, called the Serenade : La Luna 
immobile. She consulted her mother, and they sang it. 
The crowds below, swoln to a block of the street, were dead 
still, showing the instinctive good manners of the people. 
Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Provencal or 
Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic ; but it 


SKEPSEY^S MISCONDUCT 


145 


suited her mezzo-soprano tones ; and it rang massively of 
the martial-religious. To what heights of spiritual grandeur 
might not a Huguenot France have marched ! Dudley 
Sowerby, heedlessly, under an emotion that could be stirred in 
him with force, by the soul of religion issuing through music, 
addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley. She did 
not shrug or snub him, but rejoined: I could go to battle 
with that song in the ears.’^ She liked seeing him so 
happily transformed ; and liked the effect of it on Nesta 
when his face shone in talking. He was at home with the 
girFs eyes, a^ he had never been. A. song expressing in 
one the combative and devotional, went to the springs of 
his blood ; for he was of an old warrior race, beneath the 
thick crust of imposed peaceful maxims and commercial 
pursuits and habitual stiff correctness. As much as wine, 
will music bring out the native bent of the civilized man : 
endow him with language too. He was as if unlocked ; he 
met Nesta’s eyes and ran in a voluble interchange, that 
gave him flattering after-thoughts ; and at the moment 
sensibly a new and assured, or to some extent assured, 
station beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady 
would be helped to perceive his unvoiced soldier gifts. 

Hataly observed them, thinking of Victor’s mastering 
subtlety. She had hoped (having clearly seen the sheep’s 
eye in the shepherd) that Mr. Barmby would be watchful 
to act as a block between them ; and therefore she had 
stipulated for his presence on the journey. She remembered 
Victor’s rapid look of readiness to consent : — he reckoned 
how naturally Mr. Barmby would serve as a foil to any 
younger man. Mr. Barmby had tried all along to perform 
his part : he had always been thwarted ; notably once at 
Gisors, where by some cunning management he and made- 
moiselle found themselves in the cell of the prisoner’s Hail- 
wrought work while Hesta had to take Sowerby’s hand for 
help at a passage here and there along the narrow outer 
castle-walls. And Mr. Barmby, upon occasions, had set 
that dimple in Hesta’s cheek quivering, though Simeon 
Fenellan was not at hand, and there was no telling how it 
was done, beyond the evidence that Victor willed it so. 

From the day of the announcement of Lakelands, she 
had been brought more into contact with his genius of dex- 

10 


146 


ONE OF OTJR CONQUEKOKS 


terity and foresight than ever previously : she had bent to 
the burden of it more ; had seen herself and everybody else 
outstripped — herself, of course; she did not count in a 
struggle with him. But since that red dawn of Lakelands, 
it was almost as if he had descended to earth from the skies. 
She now saw his mortality in the miraculous things he did. 
The reason of it was, that through the perceptible various 
arts and shifts on her level, an opposing spirit had plainer 
view of his aim, to judge it. She thought it a mean one. 

The power it had to hurry her with the strength of a 
torrent to an end she dreaded, impressed her physically ; 
so far subduing her mind, in consequence, as to keep the 
idea of absolute resistance obscure, though her bosom 
heaved with the breath ; but what was her own of a mind 
hung hovering above him, criticizing ; and involuntarily, 
discomfortingly. She could have prayed to be led blindly 
or blindly dashed on : she could trust him for success ; and 
her critical mind seemed at times a treachery. Still she 
was compelled to judge. 

When he said to her at night, pressing both her hands : 

This is the news of the day, my love ! It ’s death at last. 
We shall soon be thanking heaven for freedom ; ’’ her fin- 
gers writhed upon his and gripped them in a torture of 
remorse on his behalf. A shattering throb of her heart 
gave her sight of herself as well. For so it is with the 
woman who loves in subjection, she may be a critic of the 
man, she is his accomplice. 

You have^ letter, Victor ? ’’ 

Confirmation all round : Fenellan, Themison, and now 
Skepsey.’’ 

He told her the tale of Skepsey and Jarniman, colouring 
it, as any interested animated conduit necessarily will. 
Neither of them smiled. 

The effort to think soberly exhausted and rolled her back 
on credulity. 

It might not be to-day or next week or month : but 
so much testimony pointed to a day within the horizon, 
surely ! 

She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The 
murderous hope stood up, stood out in forms and pictures. 
There was one of a woman at her ease at last in the recep- 


skepsey’s misconduct 


147 


tion of guests ; contrasting with an ironic haunting figure 
of the woman of queenly air and stature under a finger of 
scorn for a bold-faced impostor. Nataly’s lips twitched at 
the remembrance of quaint whimpers of complaint to the 
Fates, for directing that a large instead of a rather diminu- 
tive woman should be the social offender fearing exposure. 
Majesty in the criminars dock, is a confounding spectacle. 
To the bosom of the majestic creature, all her glorious 
attributes have become the executioner’s implements. She 
must for her soul’s health believe that a day of release and 
exoneration approaches. 

^^Barmby ! — if my dear girl would like him best,” Vic- 
tor said, in tenderest undertones, observing the shadowing 
variations of her face ; and pierced her cruelly, past expla- 
nation or understanding; — not that she would have ob- 
jected to the Eev. Septimus as officiating clergyman. 

She nodded. Down rolled the first big tear. 

We cry to women ; Land, ho ! — a land of palms after 
storms at sea; and at once they inundate us with a deluge 
of eye-water. 

^^Half a minute, dear Victor, not longer,” Nataly said, 
weeping, near on laughing over his look of wanton aban- 
donment to despair at sight of her tears. Don’t mind me. 
I am rather like Fenellan’s laundress, the tearful woman 
whose professional apparatus was her soft heart and a cake 
of soap. Skepsey has made his peace with you ? ” 

Victor answered: ^^Yes, yes; I see what he has been 
about. We ’re a mixed lot, all of us — the best ! You’ve 
noticed, Skepsey has no laugh : however absurd the thing 
he tells you, not a smile !” 

But you trust his eyes ; you look fathoms into them. 
Captain Dartrey thinks him one of the men most in earnest 
of any of his country.” 

So Nataly of course thinks the same. And he ’s a 
worthy little velocipede, as Fenellan calls him. One wishes 
Colney had been with us. Only Colney ! — pity one can’t 
cut his talons for the space before they grow again.” 

Ay, and in the presence of Colney Durance, Victor 
would not have been so encourageing, half boyishly caress- 
ing, with Dudley Sowerby ! It was the very manner to 
sow seed of imitativeness in the girl, devoted as she was to 


148 


ONE OF OtiR CONQUERORS 


her father. Nataly sighed, foreseeing evil, owning it a 
superstition, feeling it a certainty. We are easily prophets, 
sure of being justified, when the cleverness of schemes 
devoted to material ends appears most delicately perfect. 
History, the tales of households, the tombstone, are with 
us to inspire. In Nataly’s bosom, the reproof of her 
inefficiency for offering counsel where Victor for his soul’s 
sake needed it, was beginning to thunder at whiles as a 
reproach of unfittingness in his mate, worse than a public 
denunciation of the sin against Society. 

It might be decreed that she and Society were to come to 
reconcilement. A pain previously thought of, never pre- 
viously so realized, seized her at her next sight of Nesta. 

She had not taken in her front mind the contrast of the 
innocent one condemned to endure the shadow from which 
the guilty was by a transient ceremony released. Nature 
could at a push be eloquent to defend the guilty. Not a 
word of vindicating eloquence rose up to clear the innocent. 
Nothing that she could do ; no devotedness, not any sacri- 
fice, and no treaty of peace, no possible joy to come, nothing 
could remove the shadow from her child. She dreamed of 
the succour in eloquence, to charm the ears of chosen juries 
while a fact spoke over the population, with a relentless 
rolling out of its one hard word. But eloquence, power- 
ful on her behalf, was dumb when referred to Nesta. It 
seemed a cruel mystery. How was it permitted by the 
Merciful Disposer ! . . . Nataly’s intellect and her rev- 
erence clashed. They clash to the end of time if we per- 
sist in regarding the Spirit of Life as a remote Externe, who 
plays the human figures, to bring about this or that issue, 
instead of being beside us, within us, our breath, if we will ; 
marking on us where at each step w^e sink to the animal, 
mount to the divine, we and ours who follow, offspring of 
body or mind. She was in her error, from judgeing of the 
destiny of man by the fate of individuals. Chiefly her 
error was, to try to be thinking at all amid the fevered 
tangle of her sensations. 

A darkness fell upon the troubled woman, and was thicker 
overhead when her warm blood had drawn her to some ac- 
ceptance of the philosophy of existence, in a savour of 
gratification at the prospect of her equal footing with the 


A YOUNG maid’s IMAGININGS 149 

world while yet she lived. She hated herself for taking 
pleasure in anything to be bestowed by a world so hap- 
hazard, ill-balanced, unjust; she took it bitterly, with such 
naturalness as not to be aware that it was irony and a 
poisonous irony moving her to welcome the restorative 
ceremony because her largeness of person had a greater 
than common need of the protection. 


CHAPTER XVII 

CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID’s 
IMAGININGS 

That Mausoleum at Dreux may touch to lift us. History 
pleads for the pride of the great discrowned Family giving 
her illumination there. The pride is reverently postured, 
the princely mourning-cloak it wears becomingly braided 
at the hem with fair designs of our mortal humility in the 
presence of the vanquisher; against whom, acknowledgeing 
a visible conquest of the dust, it sustains a placid contention 
in coloured glass and marbles. 

Mademoiselle de Seilles, a fervid Orleanist, was thanked 
for having advised the curvature of the route homeward to 
visit ^^the spot of so impressive a monument:” as it was 
phrased by the Rev. Septimus Barmby; whose exposition 
to Xesta of the beautiful stained-glass pictures of incidents 
in the life of the crusading St. Louis, was toned to be like- 
wise impressive : — Colney Durance not being at hand to 
bewail the pathos of his exhaustles^ whacking of the 
platitudes ;” which still retain their tender parts, but cry 
unheard when there is no cynic near. Mr. Barmby laid-on 
solemnly. 

Professional devoutness is deemed more righteous on such 
occasions than poetic lire. It robes us in the cloak of the 
place, as at a funeral. Generally, Mr. Barmby found, and 
justly, that it is in superior estimation among his country- 
men of all classes. They are shown by example how to 
look, think, speak ; what to do. Poets are disturbing ; 


150 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


they cannot be comfortably imitated^ they are unsafe, not 
certainly the metal, unless you have Laureates, entitled to 
speak by their pay and decorations ; and these are but one 
at a time — and a quotation may remind us of a parody, to 
convulse the sacred dome ! Established plain prose officials 
do better for our English. The audience moved round with 
heads of undertakers. 

Victor called to recollection Fenellan’s “Eev. Glendo- 
veer while Mr. Barmby pursued his discourse, uninter- 
rupted by tripping wags. . And those who have schemes, as 
well as those who are startled by the criticism in laughter 
to discover that they have cause for shunning it, rejoice 
when wits are absent. Mr. Sower by and Nesta inter- 
changed a comment on Mr. Barmby’s remarks : The Fate of 
Frinces ! The Paths of Glory I St. Louis was a very dis- 
tant Boman Catholic monarch ; and the young gentleman 
of Evangelical education could admire him as a Crusader. 
St. Louis was for Nesta a figure in the rich hues of royal 
Saintship softened to homeliness by tears. She doated on 
a royalty crowned'with the Saint’s halo, that swam down 
to us to lift us through holy human showers. She listened 
to Mr. Barmby, hearing few sentences, lending his elo- 
quence all she felt : he rolled forth notes of a minster 
organ, accordant with the devotional service she was hold- 
ing mutely. Mademoiselle upon St. Louis : Worthy to 
be named King of Kings ! ” swept her tt) a fount of thoughts, 
where the thoughts are not yet shaped, are yet in the breast 
of the mother emotions. Louise de Seilles had prepared 
her to be strangely and deeply moved. The girl had a 
heart of many strings, of high pitch, open to be musical to 
simplest wandering airs or to the gales. This crypt of the 
recumbent sculptured figures and the coloured series of acts 
in the passage of the crowned Saint thrilled her as with 
sight of flame on an altar-piece of History. But this King 
in the lines of the Crucifixion leading, gave her a lesson of 
life, not a message from death. With such a King, there 
would be union of the old order and the new, cessation to 
political turmoil : Eadicalism, Socialism, all the monster 
names of things with heads agape in these our days to 
gobble-up the venerable, obliterate the beautiful, leave a 
stoniness of floods where field and garden were, would be 


A YOUNG maid’s IMAGININGS 


151 


appeased, transfigured. She hoped, she prayed for that 
glorious leader’s advent. 

On one subject, conceived by her only of late, and not 
intelligibly, not communicably : a subject thickly veiled ; 
one which struck at her through her sex and must, she 
thought, ever be unnamed (the ardent young creature saw 
it as a very thing torn by the winds to show hideous gleams 
of a body rageing with fire behind the veil) : on this one 
subject, he£ hopes and prayers were dumb in her bosom. It 
signified shame. She knew not the how, for she had no 
power to contemplate it : there was a torment of earth and 
a writhing of lurid dust-clouds about it at a glimpse. But 
if the new crusading Hero were to come attacking that — 
if some born prince nobly man would head the world to 
take away the withering scarlet from the face of women, 
she felt she could kiss the print of his feet upon the ground. 
Meanwhile she had enjoyment of her plunge into the inmost 
forest-well of mediaeval imaginativeness, where youthful 
minds of good aspiration through their obscurities find 
much akin to them. 

She had an eye for little Skepsey too : unaware that 
these French Princes had hurried him off to Agincourt, 
for another encounter with them and the old result — poor 
dear gentlemen, with whom we do so wish to be friendly ! 
What amused her was, his evident fatigue in undergoing 
the slow parade, and sheer deference to his betters, as to 
the signification of a holiday on arrested legs. Dudley 
Sowerby’s attention to him, in elucidating the scenes with 
historical scraps, greatly pleased her. The Eev. Septimus 
of course occupied her chiefly. 

Mademoiselle was always near, to receive his repeated 
expressions of gratitude for the route she had counselled. 
Without personal objections to a well-meaning orderly man, 
whose pardonable error it was to be aiming too considerably 
higher than his head, she did but show him the voluble 
muteness of a Frenchwoman’s closed lips ; not a smile at 
all, and certainly no sign of hostility; when bowing to 
his reiterated compliment in the sentence of French. Mr. 
Barmby had noticed (and a strong sentiment rendered him 
observant, unwontedly) a similar alert immobility of her lips, 
indicating foreign notions of this kind or that, in England ; 


152 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEKORS 


an all but imperceptible shortening or loss of corners at the 
mouth, upon mention of marriages of his clergy : particularly 
once, at his reading of a lengthy report in a newspaper of 
a Wedding Ceremony involving his favourite Bishop for 
bridegroom : a report to make one glow like Hymen rollick- 
ing the Torch after draining the bumper to the flying 
slipper. He remembered the look, and how it seemed to 
intensify on the slumbering features, at a statement, that 
his Bishop was a widower, entering into nuptials in his 
fifty-fourth year. Why not? But we ask it of Heaven 
and Man, why not ? Mademoiselle was pleasant : she was 
young or youngish ; her own clergy were celibates, and — 
no, he could not argue the matter with a young or youngish 
person of her sex. Could it be a reasonable woman — a 
woman ! — who disapproved the holy nuptials of the pastors 
of the flocks ? But we are forbidden to imagine the con- 
ducting of an argument thereon with a lady : — Luther . . . 
but we are not in Luther’s time : — Nature . . . no, nor 
can there possibly be allusions to Nature. Mr. Barmby won- 
dered at Protestant parents taking a Papistical governess 
for their young flower of English womanhood. However, 
she venerated St. Louis ; he cordially also ; there they met ; 
and he admitted, that she had, for a Frenchwoman, a hand- 
some face, and besides an agreeably artificial ingenuousness 
in the looks which could be so politely dubious as to appear 
only dubiously adverse. 

The spell upon Nesta was not blown away on English 
ground ; and when her father and mother were comparing 
their impressions, she could not but keep guard over the 
deeper among her own. At the Chateau de Gisors, leftward 
off Vernon on Seine, it had been one of romance and wonder- 
ment, with inquisitive historic soundings of her knowledge 
and mademoiselle’s, a reverence for the prisoner’s patient 
holy work, and picturings of his watchful waiting daily. 
Nail in hand, for the heaven-sent sunlight on the circular 
dungeon-wall through the slits of the meurtrieres. But the. 
Mausoleum at Dreux spake religiously; it enfolded Mr. 
Barmby, his voice re-edified it. The fact that he had dis- 
coursed there, though not a word of the discourse was re- 
membered, allied him to the spirit of a day rather increas- 
ing in sacredness as it receded and left her less the possessor 
of it, more the worshipper. 


A YOUNG maid's IMAGININGS 


153 


Mademoiselle had to say to herself : Impossible ! ’’ after 
seeing the drift of her dear Nesta’s eyes in the wake of the 
colossal English clergyman. She fed her incredulousness 
indignantly on the evidence confounding it. Nataly was 
aware of unusual intonations, treble -stressed, in the Bethesda 
and the Galilee of Mr. Barmby on Concert evenings : as it 
were, the towering wood-work of the cathedral organ in 
quake under emission of its multitudinous outroar. The 
Which of the Eev. Septimus, addressed to Nesta, when 
song was demanded of him ; and her Either ; and his 
gentle hesitation, upon a gaze at her for the directing choice, 
could not be unnoticed by women. 

Did he know a certain thing ? — and dream of urging the 
suit, as an indulgent skipper of parental pages ? — 

Such haunting interrogations were the conspirator’s 
daggers out at any instant, or leaping in sheath, against 
Nataly’s peace of mind. But she trusted her girl’s laughing 
side to rectify any little sentimental overbalancing. She 
left the ground where maternal meditations are serious, at 
an image of Mr. Barmby knocking at Nesta’s heart as a 
lover. Was it worth inquiry ? 

A feminine look was trailed across the eyes of made- 
moiselle, with mention of Mr.' Barmby’s name. 

Mademoiselle rippled her shoulders. We are at present 
much enamoured of BetliesdaP 

That watchfullest showing no alarm, the absurdity of the 
suspicion smothered it. 

Nataly had moreover to receive startling new guests : 
Lady Eodwell Blachington : Mrs. Fanning, wife of the 
General : young Mrs. Blathenoy, wife of the great bill- 
broker: ladies of Wrensham and about. And it was a 
tasking of her energies equal to the buffetting of recurrent 
waves on deep sea. The ladies were eager for her entry into 
Lakelands. She heard that Victor had appointed Lady 
Blachington’s third son to the coveted post of clerk in the 
Indian house of Inchling and Eadnor. These are the deluge 
days when even aristocracy will cry blessings on the man 
who procures a commercial appointment for one of its 
younger sons offended and rebutted by the barrier of Ex- 
aminations for the Civil Service. To have our Adolphus 
under Mr. Victor Eadnor’s protection, is a step!” Lady 


154 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Blachington said. Nataly was in an atmosphere of hints 
and revealings. There were City Dinners, to which one or 
other of the residents about Lakelands had been taken before 
he sat at Victor’s London table. He was already winning 
his way, apparently without effort, to be the popular man 
of that neighbourhood. A subterranean tide or a slipping of 
earth itself seemed bearing her on. She had his promise 
indeed, that he would not ask of her to enter Lakelands 
until the day of his freedom had risen ; but though she 
could trust to his word, the heart of the word went out of it 
when she heard herself thanked by Lady Blachington (who 
could so well excuse her at such a time of occupation for 
not returning her call, that she called in a friendly way 
a second time, warmly to thank her) for throwing open the 
Concert room at I^akelands in August, to an Entertainment 
in assistance of the funds for the purpose of erecting an 
East of London Clubhouse, where the children of the poor 
by day could play, and their parents pass a disengaged 
evening. Doubtless a worthy Charity. Nataly was alive 
to the duties of wealth. Had it been simply a demand for 
a donation, she would not have shown that momentary 
pucker of the brows, which Lady Blachington read as a 
contrast with the generous vivacity of the husband. 

Nataly read a leaf of her fate in this announcement. Nay, 
she beheld herself as the outer world vexedly beholds a 
creature swung along to the doing of things against the 
better mind, An outer world is thoughtless of situations 
which prepare us to meet the objectionable with a will 
benumbed ; — if we do not, as does that outer world, belong 
to the party of the readily heroical. She scourged her 
weakness : and the intimation of the truth stood over her, 
more than ever manifest, that the deficiency affecting her 
character lay in her want of language. A tongue to speak 
and contend, would have helped her to carve a clearer way. 
But then again, the tongue to speak must be one which 
could reproach, and strike at errors ; fence, and continually 
summon resources to engage the electrical vitality of a man 
like Victor. It was an exultation of their life together, a 
mark of its holiness for them both, that they had never 
breathed a reproach upon one another. She dropped away 
from ideas of remonstrance ; faintly seeing, in her sigh of 


A YOUNG maid’s IMAGININGS 


155 


submission, that the deficiency affecting her character would 
have been supplied by a greater force of character, pressing 
either to speech or acts. The confession of a fated inevitable 
in the mind, is weakness prostrate. She knew it : but she 
could point to the manner of man she was matched with ; 
and it was not a poor excuse. 

Mr. Barmby, she thought, deserved her gratitude in 
some degree for stepping between Mr. Sowerby and Nesta. 
The girl not having inclinations, and the young gentleman 
being devoid of stratagem, they were easily kept from the 
dangerous count of two. 

Mademoiselle would have said, that the shepherd also 
had rarely if ever a minute quite alone with her lamb. 
Incredulously she perceived signs of a shock. The secret 
following the signs was betrayed by Nesta in return for a 
tender grasp of hands and a droll flutter of eyelids. Out 
it came, on a nod first; then a dreary mention of a date, 
and an incident, to bring it nearer to comprehension. Mr. 
Barmby — and decide who will whether it is that Love 
was made to elude or that curates impelled by his fires are 
subtle as aether — had outwitted French watchfulness by 
stealing minutes enough on a day at Lakelands to declare 
himself. And no wonder the girl looked so forlorn : he 
had shivered her mediaeval forest-palace of illuminated 
glass, to leave her standing like a mountain hind, that 
sniffs the tainted gale off the crag of her first quick leap 
from hounds; her instincts alarmed, instead of rich imagi- 
nation colouring and fostering. 

She had no memory for his words; so,- and truly, she 
told her Louise: meaning that she had only a spiceless 
memory ; especially for the word love in her ears from the 
mouth of a man. 

There had been a dream of it; with the life-awakening 
marvel it would be, the humbleness it would bring to her 
soul beneath the golden clothing of her body: one of 
those faint formless dreams, which are as the bend of 
grasses to the breath of a still twilight. She lived too 
spiritedly to hang on any dream; and had moreover a 
muffled dread — shadow-sister to the virginal desire — of 
this one, as of a fateful power that might drag her down, 
disorder, discolour. But now she had heard it : the word, 


156 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the very word itself ! in her own ears ! addressed to her ! 
in a man’s voice ! The first utterance had been heard, and 
it was over; the chapter of the book of bulky promise of 
the splendours and mysteries — the shimmering woods and 
bushy glades, and the descent of the shape celestial, and 
the recognition — the mutual cry of affinity; and overhead 
the crimson outrolling of the flag of beneficent enterprises 
hand in hand, all was at an end. These, then, are the 
deceptions our elders tell of ! That masculine voice should 
herald a new world to the maiden. The voice she had 
heard did but rock to ruin the world she had been living 
in. 

Mademoiselle prudently forbore from satirical remarks 
on his person or on his conduct. Nesta had nothing to 
defend: she walked in a bald waste. 

‘‘Can I have been guilty of leading him to think? . . 
she said, in a tone that writhed, at a second discussion of 
this hapless affair. 

“They choose to think,” mademoiselle replied. “It is 
he or another. My dear and dearest, you have entered 
the field where shots fly thick, as they do to soldiers in 
battle; and it is neither your fault Tior anyone’s, if you 
are hit.” 

Nesta gazed at her, with a shy supplicating cry of 
“Louise.” 

Mademoiselle immediately answered the tone of entreaty. 
“ Has it happened to me ? I am of the age of eight and 
twenty; passable, to look at: yes, my dear, I have gone 
through it. To spare you the questions tormenting you, 
I will tell you, that perhaps our experience of our feelings 
comes nigh on a kind of resemblance. The first gentleman 
who did me the honour to inform me of his passion, was 
a hunchback.” 

Xesta cried “ Oh ! ” in a veritable pang of sympathy, and 
clapped hands to her ears, to shut out Mr. Earmby’s boom 
of the terrific word attacking Louise from that deformed 
one. 

Her disillusionment became of the sort which hears 
derision. A girl of quick blood and active though unreg- 
ulated intellect, she caught at the comic of young women’s 
hopes and experiences , in her fear of it. 


A YOUKG maid’s imaginings 157 

own precious poor dear Louise! what injustice 
there is in the world for one like my Louise to have a 
hunchback to be the first! . . 

‘^But, my dear, it did me no harm.” 

“ But if it had been known ! ” 

“ But it was known ! ” 

Kesta controlled a shuddering: ^^It is the knowledge of 
it in ourselves — that it has ever happened; — you dear 
Louise, who deserve so much better! And one asks — Oh, 
why are we not left in peace! And do look at the objects 
it makes of us!” Mademoiselle could see, that the girl’s 
desperation had got hold of her humour for a life-buoy. 
“ It is really worse to have it unknown — when you are 
compelled to be his partner in sharing the secret, and feel 
as if it were a dreadful doll you conceal for fear that every- 
body will laugh at its face.” 

She resumed her seriousness : ‘‘ I find it so hard to be 
vexed with him and really really like him. For he is a 
good man; but he will not let one shake him off. He dis- 
tresses: because we can’t quite meet as we did. Last 
Wednesday Concert evening, he kept away; and I am 
annoyed that I was glad.” 

Moths have to pass through showers, and keep their 
pretty patterns from damage as best they can,” said 
mademoiselle. 

Nesta transformed herself into a disciple of Philosophy 
on the spot. ‘‘Yes, all these feelings of ours are moth- 
dust! One feels them. I suppose they pass. They must. 
But tell me, Louise, dear soul, was your poor dear good 
little afflicted suitor — > was he kindly pitied ?” 

“Conformably with the regulations prescribed to young 
damsels who are in request to surrender the custody of 
their hands. It is easy to commit a dangerous excess in 
the dispensing of that article they call pity of them.” 

“ And he — did he ? — vowed to you he could not take No 
for an answer ? ” 

At this ingenuous question, woefully uttered, mademoi- 
selle was pricked to smile pointedly. Nesta had a tooth 
on her under-lip. Then, shaking vapours to the winds, 
she said: “It is an honour, to be asked; and we cannot be 
expected to consent. So I shall wear through it. — Only I 


158 


OKE OF OITR CONQUEBORS 


do wish that Mr. renellan would not call him The Inch- 
cape Bell ! ” She murmured this to herself. 

Mr. Barmby was absent for two weeks. Can anything 
have offended him?” Victor inquired, in some consterna- 
tion, appreciating the man’s worth, and the grand basso he 
was; together with the need for him at the Lakelands 
Concert in August. 

Nataly wrote Mr. Barmby a direct invitation. She had 
no reply. Her speculations were cut short by Victor, who 
handed her a brief note addressed to him and signed by the 
Bev. Septimus, petitioning for a private interview. 

The formality of the request incensed Victor. “Now, 
dear love, 3^ou see Colney’s meaning, when he says, there 
are people who have no intimacy in them. Here ’s a man 
who visits me regularly once a week or more, has been 
familiar for years — four, at least; and he wants to speak 
to me, and must obtain the ‘ privilege ’ by special appoint- 
ment ! What can be the meaning of it ?” 

“You will hear to-morrow afternoon,” Nataly said, see- 
ing one paved wa}^ to the meaning — a too likely meaning. 

“He hasn’t been . . . nothing about Fredi, surely! ” 

“I have had no information.” 

“Impossible! Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can’t 
intend to come scraping on that string. But we won’t 
lose him; he ’s one of us. Barmby counts for more at a 
Charity Concert than all the catalogue, and particularly in 
the country. But he ’s an excellent fellow — eh ? ” 

“That he is,” Nataly agreed. 

Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr. 
Barmby privately on the late afternoon of the day to 
follow. 

Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of 
the interview, ignorant of Mr. Barmby ’s purpose though 
she was, had her fires extinguished by the rolling roar of 
curfew along the hall-passage, out of the library. 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA 169 


CHAPTER XVIII 

SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA 

When, upon the well-known quest, the delightful singer 
Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old 
Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the 
hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave 
of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke 
raised voice. This much you know. It may be commu- 
nicated to you, that there was then beheld the most singular 
spectacle ever exhibited on the dizzy line of division be- 
tween the living and the dead. For those unaccustomed 
musical tones in the last thin whiff of our sustaining air 
were so smartingly persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of 
the faithful Old Dog before his offended sentiments had 
leisure to rouse their heads against a beggar of a mortal. 
The terrible sugariness which poured into him worked 
like venom to cause an encounter and a wrestling; his 
battery of jaws expressed it. They gaped. At the same 
time, his eyeballs gave up. All the Dog, that would have 
barked the breathing intruder an hundredfold back to earth, 
was one compulsory centurion yawn. Tears, issue of the 
frightful internal wedding of the dulcet and the sour (a 
ravishing rather of the latter by the former), rolled off 
his muzzles. 

Now, if you are not for insisting that a magnificent 
simile shall be composed of exactly the like notes in 
another octave, you will catch the fine flavour of analogy 
and be wafted in a beat of wings across the scene of the 
application of the Rev. Septimus Barmby to Mr. Victor 
Radnor, that he might enter the house in the guise of 
suitor for the hand of Nesta Victoria. It is the excelling 
merit of similes and metaphors to spring us to vault over 
gaps and thickets and dreary places. But, as with the 
visits of Immortals, we must be ready to receive them. 
Beware, moreover, of examining them too scrupulously: 
they have a trick of wearing to vapour if closely scanned. 
Let it be gratefully for their aid. 


160 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


So far the comparison is absolute, that Mr. Barmby 
'passed : he was at liberty to pursue his quest. 

Victor could not explain how he had been brought to 
grant it. He was at pains to conceal the bewilderment Mr. 
Barmby had cast on him, and make Nataly see the small- 
ness of the grant: — both of them were unwilling to lose 
Barmby; there was not the slightest fear about Bredi, he 
said; and why should not poor Barmby have his chance with 
the others in the race ! — and his Nataly knew that he hated 
to speak unkindly : he could cry the negative like a crack of 
thunder in the City. But such matters as these ! and a man 
pleading merely for the right to see the girl ! — and pleading 
in a tone ... “I assure you, my love, he touched chords.^’ 
Did he allude to advantages in the alliance with him ? 
Nataly asked smoothly. 

‘^His passion — nothing else. Candid enough. And he 
had a tone — he has a tone, you know. It ’s not what 
he said. Some allusion to belief in a favourable opinion 
of him . . . encouragement ... on the part of the mama. 
She would have him travelling with us ! I foresaw it.^’ 
You were astonished when it came.’^ 

We always are.’’ 

Victor taunted her softly with having encouraged Mr. 
Barmby. 

She had thought in her heart — not seriously; on a sigh 
of despondency — that Mr. Barmby espousing the girl 
would smoothe a troubled prospect : and a present resent- 
ment at her weakness rendered her shrewd to detect Vic- 
tor’s cunning to cover his own: a thing imaginable of 
him previously in sentimental matters, yet never accurately 
and so legibly printed on her mind. It did not draw her 
to read him with a novel familiarity; it drew her to be 
more sensible of foregone intimations of the man he was 
— irresistil^le in attack, not impregnably defensive. Nor 
did he seem in this instance humanely considerate: if 
mademoiselle’s estimate of the mind of the girl was not 
wrong, then Mr. Barmby ’s position would be both a ridicu- 
lous and a cruel one. She had some silly final idea that 
the poor man might now serve permanently to check the 
more dreaded applicant: a proof that her ordinary reflec- 
tiveness was blunted. 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA 161 

Nataly acknowledged, after rallying Victor for coming 
to have his weakness condoned, a justice in his counter- 
accusation, of a loss of her natural cheerfulness, and prom- 
ised amendment, with a steely smile, that his lips mimicked 
fondly; and her smile softened. To strengthen the dear 
soul’s hopes, he spoke, as one who had received the latest 
information, of Dr. Themison and surgeons; — little con- 
scious of the tragic depths he struck or of the burden 
he gave her heart to bear. Her look alarmed him. She 
seemed to be hugging herself up to the tingling scalp, and 
was in a moment marble to sight and touch. She looked 
like the old engravings of martyrs taking the bite of the 
jaws of flame at the stake. 

He held her embraced, feeling her body as if it were in 
the awful grip of fingers from the outside of life. 

The seizure was over before it could be called ominous. 
When it was once over, and she had smiled again and re- 
buked him for excessive anxiety, his apprehensions no 
longer troubled him, but subsided sensationally in wrath 
at the crippled woman who would not obey the dictate of 
her ailments instantly to perish and spare this dear one 
annoyance. 

Subsequently, later than usual, he performed his usual 
mental penance for it. In consequence, the wrath, and the 
wish, and the penitence, haunted him, each swelling to 
possession of him in turn; until they united to head a 
plunge into retrospects; which led to his reviewing the 
army of charges against Mrs. Burman. 

And of this he grew ashamed, attributing it to the morbid 
indulgence in reflection: a disease never afflicting him 
anterior to the stupid fall on London Bridge. He rubbed 
instinctively for the punctilio-bump, and could cheat his 
fancy to think a remainder of it there, just below, half an 
inch to the right of, the spot where a phrenologist, invited 
by Nataly in old days, had marked pjiilo-progenitiveness 
on his capacious and enviable cerebrum. He knew well it 
was a fancy. But it was a fact also, that since the day of 
the fall (never, save in merest glimpses, before that day), 
he had taken to look behind him, as though an eye had 
been knocked in the back of his head. 

Then, was that day of the announcement of Lakelands 

11 




162 ONE OF OtTR CONQtJEROKS ' 

to Nataly, to be accounted a gloomy day ? He would not 
have it so. | 

She was happily occupied with her purchases of furni- 
ture, Fredi with her singing lessons, and he with his busi- 
ness; a grasp of many ribands, reining-in or letting loose; 
always enjoyable in the act. Kecently only had he known 
when at home, a relaxation, a positive pleasure in looking 
forward to the hours of the City office. This was odd, but 
so it was ; and looking homeward from the City, he had a 
sense of disappointment when it was not Concert evening. 
The Cormyns, the Yatts, and Priscilla Graves, and Penip- 
ton, foolish fellow, and that bothering Barmby, and Peri- 
don and Catkin, were the lineing of his nest. Well, and so 
they had been before Lakelands rose. What had induced! 

.* . . he suddenly felt foreign to himself. The shrouded 
figure of his lost Idea on London Bridge went by. 

A peep into the folds of the shroud was granted him : 
— Is it a truth, that if we are great owners of money, w^e 
are so swoln with a force not native to us, as to be precipi- 
tated into acts the downright contrary of our tastes ? 

He inquired it of his tastes, which have the bad habit 
of unmeasured phrasing when they are displeased, and so 
they yield no rational answer. Still he gave heed to vio- 
lent extraneous harpings against money. Epigrams of 
Colney^s; abuse of it and the owners of it by Socialist 
orators reported in some newspaper corner, — had him by 
the ears. 

They ceased in the presence of Lady Grace Halley, who 
entered his office to tell him she was leaving town for 
Whinfold, her husband’s family-seat, where the dear man 
lay in evil case. She signified her resignation to the 
decrees from above, saying generously : 

“You look troubled, my friend. Any bad City news ?” 

“I look troubled ? ” Victor said laughing, and bethought 
him of what the trouble might be. “City news would 
not cause the look. Ah, yes; — I was talking in the street 
to a friend of mine on horseback the other day, and he kept 
noticing his horse’s queer starts. We spied half a dozen 
children in the gutter, at the tail of the horse, one of them 
plucking at a hair. ‘ Please, sir, may I have a hair out of 
your horse’s tail ? ’ said the mite. We patted the poor 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF I^ESTA VICTORIA 16S 

liorse that grew a tail for urchins to pluck at. Men come 
to the fathers about their girls. It ’s my belief that 
mothers more easily say no. If they learn the word as 
maids, you '11 say ! However, there 's no fear about my 
girl. Fredi 's hard to snare. And what brings you 
Cityward ? '' 

‘‘ I want to know whether I shall do right in selling out 
of the Tiddler mine.'' 

“You have multiplied your investment by ten." 

“If it had been thousands! " 

“Clearly, you sell; always jump out of a mounted mine, 
unless you 're at the bottom of it." 

“There are City-articles against the mine this morning 
— or I should have been on my way to Whinfold at this 
moment. The shares are lower." 

“ The merry boys are at work to bring your balloon to 
the ground, that you may quit it for them to ascend. 
Tiddler has enemies, like the best of mines: or they may 
be named lovers, if you like. And mines that have gone 
up, go down for a while before they rise again; it's an 
affair of undulations; rocket mines are not so healthy. 
The stories are false, for the time. I had the latest from 
Dartrey Fenellan yesterday. He 's here next month, some 
time in August." 

“He is married, is he not ? " 

“Was." 

Victor's brevity sounded oddly to Lady Grace. 

“Is he not a soldier ? " she said. 

“Soldiers and parsons! " Victor interjected. 

How she saw. She understood the portent of Mr. 
Barmby's hovering offer of the choice of songs, and the 
recent tremulousness of the welling Bethesda^ 

But she had come about her own business; and after 
remarking, that when there is a prize there must be com- 
petition, or England will have to lower her flag, she 
declared her resolve to stick to Tiddler, exclaiming: “It 's 
only in mines that twenty times the stake is not a dream 
of the past 1 " 

“ The Eiviera green field on the rock is always open to 
you," said Victor. 

She put out her hand to be taken. “Hot if you back 


164 


ONE OF OtJR CONQUEBOHS 


me here. It really is not gambling when yours is the 
counsel I follow. And if I ’m to be a widow, I shall have 
to lean on a friend, gifted like you. I love adventure, 
danger; — well, if we two are in it; just to see my captain 
in a storm. And if the worst happens, we go down to- 
gether. It ’s the detestation of our deadly humdrum of 
modern life; some inherited love of fighting.’^ 

“Say, brandy. 

“ Does not Mr. Durance accuse you of an addiction to 
the brandy novel ? 

“ Colney may call it what he pleases. If I read fiction, 
let it be fiction ; airier than hard fact. If I see a ballet, 
my troop of short skirts must not go stepping like pavement 
policemen. I can’t read dull analytical stuff or ‘ stylists ’ 
when I want action — if I ’m to give my mind to a story. 
I can supply the reflections. I ’m English — if Colney ’s 
right in saying we always come round to the story with 
the streak of supernaturalism. I don’t ask for bloodshed : 
that ’s what his ‘brandy ’ means.” 

“But Mr. Durance is right, we require a shedding; I 
confess I expect it where there’s love; it’s part of the 
balance, and justifies one’s excitement. How otherwise 
do you get any real crisis ? I must read and live some- 
thing unlike this flat life around us.” 

“There ’s the Adam life and the Macadam life, Eenellan 
says. Pass it in books, but in life we can have quite 
enough excitement coming out of our thoughts. No brandy 
there ! And no fine name for personal predilections or 
things done in domino ! ” Victor said, with his very pleas- 
ant face, pressing her hand, to keep the act of long hold- 
ing it in countenance and bring it to a well-punctuated 
conclusion : thinking involuntarily of the other fair woman, 
whose hand was his, and who betrayed a beaten visage 
despite — or with that poor kind of — trust in her captain. 
But the thought was not guilty of drawing comparisons. 
“This is one that I could trust, as captain or mate,” he 
pressed the hand again before dropping it. 

“You judge entirely by the surface, if you take me for 
a shifty person at the trial,” said Lady Grace. 

Skepsey entered the room with one of his packets, and 
she was reminded of trains and husbands. 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OP NESTA VICTORIA 165 

She left Victor uncomfortably ruffled : and how? for she 
had none of the physical charms appealing peculiarly to 
the man who was taken with grandeur of shape. She 
belonged rather to the description physically distasteful to 
him. 

It is a critical comment on a civilization carelessly dis- 
tilled from the jealous East, when visits of fair women to 
City offices can have this effect. If the sexes are separated 
for an hour, the place where one is excluded or not common 
to see, becomes inflammable to that appearing spark. He 
does outrage to a hona Dea : she to the monasticism of the 
Court of Law: and he and she awaken unhallowed emo- 
tions. Supposing, however, that western men were to de- 
orientalize their gleeful notions of her, and dis-Turk 
themselves by inviting the woman’s voluble tongue to 
sisterly occupation there in the midst of the pleading 
Court, as in the domestic circle: very soon would her 
eyes be harmless : — unless directed upon us with intent. 

That is the burning core of the great Question, our 
Armageddon in Morality: Is she moral? Does she mean 
to be harmless ? Is she not untamable Old Nature ? And 
when once on an equal footing with her lordly half, would 
not the spangled beauty, in a turn, like the realistic trans- 
formation-trick of a pantomime, show herself to be that 
wanton old thing — the empress of disorderliness ? You 
have to recollect, as the Conservative acutely suggests, 
that her timidities, at present urging her to support 
Establishments, pertain to her state of dependence. The 
party views of Conservatism are, must be, founded, we 
should remember, on an intimate acquaintance with her 
in the situations where she is almost unrestrictedly free 
and her laughter rings to confirm the sentences of classical 
authors and Eastern sages. Conservatives know what they 
are about when they refuse to fling the last lattice of an 
ancient harem open to air and sun — the brutal dispersers 
of mystery, which would despoil an ankle of its flying 
wink. 

Victor’s opinions were those of the entrenched majority; 
objecting to the occult power of women, as we have the 
women now, while legislating to maintain them so; and 
forbidding a step to a desperately wicked female world 


166 


ONE OF OTJR CONQUEKORS 


lest the step should be to wickeder. His opinions were 
in the background, rarely stirred ; but the lady had brought 
them forward; and he fretted at his restlessness, vexed 
that it should be due to the intrusion of the sex instead of 
to the charms of the individual. No sting of the sort had 
bothered him, he called to mind, on board the Channel 
boat — nothing to speak of. Why does she come here! 
Why did n’t she go to her husband I She gets into the City 
scramble blindfold, and catches at the nearest hand to help 
her out! Nice woman enough.” Yes, but he was annoyed 
with her for springing sensations that ran altogether heart- 
less to the object, at the same time that they w’ere disloyal 
to the dear woman their natural divinity. And between 
him and that dear woman, since the communication made 
by Skepsey in the town of Dreux, nightly the dividing 
spirit of Mrs. Burman lay: cold as a corpse. They both 
felt her there. They kissed coldly, pressed a hand, said 
good-night. 

Next afternoon the' announcement by Skepsey of the 
Hon. Dudley Sowerby, surprised Victor’s eyebrows at 
least, and caused him genially to review the visit of Lady 
Grace. 

Whether or not Colney Durance drew his description of 
a sunken nobility from the sick falcon ” distinguishing the 
handsome features of Mr. Sowerby, that beaked invalid 
was particularly noticeable to Victor during the statement 
of his case, although the young gentleman was far from 
being one, in Colney ’s words, to enliven the condition of 
domestic fowl with an hereditary turn for “preying;” 
eminently the reverse; he was of good moral repute, a 
worker, a commendable citizen. But there was the obliga- 
tion upon him to speak ■ — it is expected in such cases, if 
only as a formality — of his “love:” hard to do even in 
view and near to the damsel’s reddening cheeks: it per- 
plexed him. He dropped a veil on the bashful topic; his 
tone was the same as when he reverted to the material 
points; his present income, his position in the great Bank 
of Shotts & Co., his prospects, the health of the heir to the 
Cantor earldom. He considered that he spoke to a mem- 
ber of the City merchants, whose preference for the plain 
positive, upon the question of an alliance between families 


SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA 167 

by marriage, lends them for once a resemblance to lords. 
When a person is not read by character, the position or 
profession is called on to supply raised print for the 
finger-ends to spell. 

Hard on poor Fredi! was Victor’s thought behind the 
smile he bent on this bald Cupid. She deserved a more 
poetical lover! His paternal sympathies for the girl be- 
sought in love, revived his past feelings as a wooer; noth- 
ing but a dread of the influence of Mr. Barmby’s toned 
eloquence upon the girl, after her listening to Dudley 
Sowerby’s addresses, checked his contempt for the latter. 
He could not despise the suitor he sided with against 
another and seemingly now a more dangerous. Unable 
quite to repress the sentiment, he proceeded immediately 
to put it to his uses. For we have no need to be scrupu- 
lously formal and precise in the exposition of circum- 
stances to a fellow who may thank the stars if such a girl 
condescends to give him a hearing. He had this idea 
through the conception of his girl’s generosity. And 
furthermore, the cognizant eye of a Lucretian Alma Mater 
having seat so strongly in Victor, demanded as a right an 
effusion of the promising amorous graces on the part of 
the acceptable applicant to the post of husband of that 
peerless. These being absent, evidently non-existent, it 
seemed sufficient for the present, after the fashion of the 
young gentleman, to capitulate the few material matters 
briefly. 

They were dotted along with a fine disregard of the 
stateliness of the sum to be settled on Nesta Victoria, and 
with a distant but burning wish all the while, that the 
suitor had been one to touch his heart and open it, inspir- 
iting it — as could have been done — to disclose for good 
and all the things utterable. Victor loved clear honesty, 
as he loved light : and though he hated to be accused of 
not showing a clean face in the light, he would have been 
moved and lifted to confess to a spot by the touch at his 
heart. Dudley Sowerby’s deficiencies, however, were 
outweighed by the palpable advantages of his birth, his 
prospects, and his good repute for conduct; add thereto 
his gentlemanly manners. Victor sighed again over his 
poor Fredi; and in telling Mr. Sowerby that the choice 


168 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


must be left to her, he had the regrets of a man aware of 
his persuasive arts and how they would be used, to think 
that he was actually making the choice. 

Observe how fatefully he who has a scheme is the engine 
of it; he is no longer the man of his tastes or of his prin- 
ciples; he is on a line of rails for a terminus; and he may 
cast languishing eyes across waysides to right and left, 
he has doomed himself to proceed, with a self-devouring 
hunger for the half desired; probably manhood gone at 
the embrace of it. This may be or not, but Nature has 
decreed to him the forfeit of pleasure. She bids us count 
the passage of a sober day for the service of the morrow; 
that is her system; and she would have us adopt it, to keep 
in us the keen edge for cutting, which is the guarantee of 
enjoyment: doing otherwise, we lose ourselves in one or 
other of the furious matrix instincts ; we are blunt to all 
else. 

Young Dudley fully agreed that the choice must be with 
Miss Kadnor; he alluded to her virtues, her accomplish- 
ments. He was waxing to fervidness. He said he must 
expect competitors; adding, on a start, that he was to 
say, from his mother, she, in the case of an intention to 
present Miss Eadnor at Court. . . . 

Victor waved hand for a finish, looking as though his 
head had come out of hot water. He sacrificed Eoyalty to 
his necessities, under a kind of sneer at its functions: 
‘‘Court! my girl ? But the arduous duties are over for the 
season. We are a democratic people retaining the seduc- 
tions of monarchy, as a friend says; and of course a girl 
may like to count among the flowers of the kingdom for a 
day, in the list of Court presentations; no harm. Only 
there ’s plenty of time . . . very young girls have their 
heads turned — though I don’t say, don’t imagine, my girl 
would. By and by perhaps.” 

Dudley v/as ushered into Mr. Inchling’s room and intro- 
duced to the figure-head of the Firm of Inchling, Penner- 
gate, and Eadnor: a respectable City merchant indeed, 
whom Dudley could read-off in a glimpse of the downright 
contrast to his partner. He had heard casual remarks on 
the respectable City of London merchant from Colney 
Durance. A short analytical gaze at him, helped to an 


SUITOBS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA 169 

estimate of the powers of the man who kept him up. Mr. 
Iiichling was a Horid City-feaster, descendant of a line of 
City merchants, having features for a wife to identify ; as 
drovers, they tell us, can single one from another of their 
round-bellied beasts. Formerly the leader of the Firm, 
he was now, after dreary fits of restiveness, kickings, false 
prophecies of ruin, Victor’s obedient cart-horse. He 
sighed in set terms for the old days of the Firm, when, 
like trouts in the current, the Firm had only to gape for 
shoals of good things to fatten it: a tale of English pros- 
perity in quiescence; narrated interjectorily among the 
by-ways of the City, and wanting only metre to make it 
our national Poem. 

Mr. Inchling did not deny that grand mangers of golden 
oats were still somehow constantly allotted to him. His 
! wife believed in Victor, and deemed the loss of the balanc- 
ing Pennergate a gain. Since that lamentable loss, Mr. 
Inchling, under the irony of circumstances the Tory of 
Commerce, had trotted and gallopped whither driven, 
racing like mad against his will and the rival nations now 
in the field to force the pace; a name for enterprise; the 
close commercial connection of a man who speculated — 
who, to put it plainly, lived on his wits; hurried onward 
and onward; always doubting, munching, grumbling at 
satisfaction, in perplexity of the gratitude which is appre- 
hensive of black Nemesis at a turn of the road, to con- 
found so wild a whip as Victor Pad nor. He had never 
I forgiven the youth's venture in India of an enormous pur- 
chase of Cotton many years back, and which he had repu- 
diated, though not his share of the hundreds of thousands 
realized before the refusal to ratify the bargain had come 
to Victor. Mr. Inchling dated his first indigestion from 
that disquieting period. He assented to the ])raise of 
Victor’s genius, admitting benefits; his heart refused to 
pardon, and consequently his head wholly to trust, the 
man who robbed him of his quondam comfortable feeling 
of security. And if you will imagine the sprite of the 
aggregate English Taxpayer personifying Steam as the 
malignant who has despoiled him of the blessed Safety- 
Assurance he once had from his God Neptune against 
invaders, you will comprehend the state of Mr. Inchling’s 


170 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


mind in regard to his terrific and bountiful, but very dis- 
turbing partner. 

He thanked heaven to his wife often, that he had noth- 
ing to do with North American or South American mines 
and pastures or with South Africa and gold and diamonds : 
and a wife must sometimes listen, mastering her inward 
comparisons. Dr. Schlesien had met and meditated on 
this example of the island energy. Mr. Tnchling was not 
permitted by his wife to be much the guest of the Kadnor 
household, because of the frequent meeting there with 
Colney Durance ; Colney’s humour for satire being instantly 
in bristle at sight of his representative of English City 
merchants: ‘‘over whom,’’ as he wrote of the venerable 
body, “the disciplined and instructed Germans not devi- 
ously march; whom acute and adventurous Americans, with 
half a cock of the eye in passing, compassionately out- 
strip.” He and Dr. Schlesien agreed upon Mr. Inchling. 
Meantime the latter gentleman did his part at the tables 
of the wealthier City Companies, and retained his appear- 
ance of health; he was beginning to think, upon a calcula- 
tion of the increased treasures of those Companies and the 
country, that we, the Taxpayer, ought not to leave it alto- 
gether to Providence to defend them; notwithstanding the 
watchful care of us hitherto shown by our briny Provi- 
dence, to save us from anxiety and expense. But there 
are, he said, “difficulties;” and the very word could stop 
him, as commonly when our difficulty lies in the exercise 
of thinking. 

Victor’s African room, containing large wall-maps of 
auriferous regions, was inspected; and another, where 
clerks were busy over miscellaneous Continents. Dudley 
Sowerby hoped he might win the maiden. 

He and Victor walked in company Westward. The shop 
of Boyle and Luckwort, chemists, was not passed on this 
occasion. Dudley grieved that he had to be absent from 
the next Concert for practice, owing to his engagement to 
his mother to go down to the family seat near Tunbridge 
Wells. Victor mentioned his relatives, the Duvidney 
maiden ladies, residing near the Wells. They measured 
the distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge, the two 
houses, as for half an hour on horseback, 


OF NATURE AND CIKGUMSTANCE 


171 


Nesta told her father at home that the pair of them had 
been observed confidentially arm in arm, and conversing 
so profoundly. 

Who, do you think, was the topic Victor asked. 

She would not chase the little blue butterfly of a guess. 


CHAPTER XIX 

TREATS OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE DISSEN- 
SION BETWEEN THEM AND OF A SATIRIST’S MALIGNITY 
IN THE DIRECTION OF HIS COUNTRY 

There is at times in the hearts of all men of active life 
a vivid wild moment or two of dramatic dialogue between 
the veteran antagonists, Xature and Circumstance, when 
they, whose business it should be to be joyfully one, 
furiously split; and the Dame is up with her shrillest 
querulousness to inquire of her offspring, for the distinct 
original motive of his conduct. Why did he bring her to 
such a pass! And what is the gain? If he be not an 
alienated issue of the great Mother, he will strongly incline 
to her view, that he put himself into harness to join with 
a machine going the dead. contrary way of her welfare; and 
thereby wrote himself donkey, for his present reading. 
Soldiers, heroes, even the braided, even the wearers of the 
gay cock’s feathers, who get the honours and the pocket- 
pieces, know the moment of her electrical eloquence. 
They have no answer for her, save an index at the 
machine pushing them on yet farther under the enemy’s 
line of fire, where they pluck the golden wreath or the 
livid, and in either case listen no more. They glorify her 
topping wisdom while on the march to confound it. She 
is wise in her way. But it is asked by the disputant. If 
we had followed her exclusively, how far should we have 
travelled from our starting-point? We of the world and 
its prizes and duties must do her an injury to make her 
tongue musical to us, and her argument worthy of atten- 
tion, So it seems. How to keep the proper balance be- 


172 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEKORS 


tween those two testy old wranglers, that rarely pull the 
right way together, is as much the task for men in the 
grip of the world, as for the wanton youthful fry under 
dominion of their instincts; and probably, when it is done, 
man will have attained the golden age of his retirement 
from service. 

Why be scheming? Victor asked. Unlike the gallant 
soldiery, his question was raised in the blush of a success, 
from an examination of the quality of the thing won; 
although it had not changed since it was first coveted ; it 
was demonstrably the same: and an astonishing dry stick 
he held, as a reward for perpetual agitations and perver- 
sions of his natural tastes. Here was a Dudley Sowerby, 
the direct issue of the conception of Lakelands; if indeed 
they were not conceived together in one; and the young 
gentleman had moral character, good citizen substance, and 
station, rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was 
firm. Yet so far was it fiom hearty, that when hearing 
a professed satirist like Colney Durance remark on the 
decorous manner of Dudley’s transparent courtship of the 
girl, under his look of an awakened approval of himself, 
that he appeared to be asking everybody: — Do you not 
think I bid fair for an excellent father of Philistines? — 
Victor had a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley’s drag- 
ging him bodily to be the grandfather. Poor Predi, too! 
— necessarily the mother: condemned by her hard fate to 
feel proud of Philistine babies ! Though women soon get 
reconciled to it! Or do they? They did once. What if 
his Fredi turned out one of the modern young women, who 
have drunk of ideas? He caught himself speculating on 
that, as on a danger. The alliance with Dudley really 
seemed to set him facing backward. 

Colne}^ might not have been under prompting of Nataly 
when he derided Dudley; but Victor was at war with the 
picture of her, in her compression of a cruel laugh, while 
her eyelids were hard shut, as if to exclude the young 
patriarch of Philistines’ ridiculous image. 

He hearkened to the Nature interrogating him, why 
had he stepped on a path to put division between himself 
and his beloved ? — the smallest of gaps; and still the very 
smallest between nuptial lovers is a division — and that 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 173 

may become a mortal wound to their one life. Why had 
he roused a slumbering world? Glimpses of the world’s 
nurse-like, old-fashioned, mother-nightcap benevolence to 
its kicking favourites; its long-suffering tolerance for 
the heroic breakers of its rough-cast laws, while the decent 
curtain continues dropped, or lifted only ankle-high; to- 
gether with many scenes, lively suggestions, of the choice 
of ways he liked best, told of things, which were better 
things, incomprehensibly forfeited. So that the plain 
sense of value insisted on more than one weighing of the 
gain in hand : a dubious measure. 

He was as little disposed to reject it as to stop his course 
at a goal of his aim. Nevertheless, a gain thus poorly 
estimated, could not command him to do a deed of humili- 
ation on account of it. The speaking to this dry young 
Dudley was not imperative at present. A word would do 
in the day to come. 

Nataly was busy with her purchases of furniture, and 
the practice for the great August Concert. He dealt her 
liberal encouragements, up to the verge of Dr. Themison’s 
latest hummed words touching Mrs. Burman, from which 
he jumped in alarm lest he should paralyze her again: 
the dear soul’s dreaded aspect of an earthy pallor was 
a spectre behind her cheeks, ready to rush forth. Fenellan 
brought Carling to dine with him; and Themison was con- 
firmed by Carling, with incidents in proof; Carling by 
Jarniman, also with incidents; one very odd one — or so 
it seemed, in the fury of the first savour of it : — she in- 
formed Jarniman, Skepsey said his friend Jarniman said, 
that she had dreamed of making her appearance to him on 
the night of the 23rd August, and of setting the date on 
the calendar over his desk, when she entered his room: 
“Sitting-room, not bedroom; she was always quite the 
lady,” Skepsey reported his Jarniman. Mrs. Burman, as 
a ghost, would respect herself; she would keep to her 
character. Jarniman quite expected the dream to be veri- 
fied; she was a woman of her word: he believed she had 
received a revelation of the approaching fact : he was pre- 
paring for the scene. 

Victor had to keep silent and discourse of general pros- 
perity. His happy vivaciousness assisted him to feel it by 


174 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


day. Nataly heard him at night, on a moan : Poor soul ! 
and loudly once while performing an abrupt demi- vault 
from back to side : Perhaps now ! in a voice through 
doors. She schooled herself to breathe equably. 

Not being allowed to impart the distressing dose of 
comfort he was charged with, he swallowed it himself ; and 
these were the consequences. And an uneasy sleep was 
traditionally a matter for grave debate in the Kadnor family. 
The Duvidney ladies, Dorothea and Virginia, would have 
cited ancestral names, showing it to be the worst of intima- 
tions. At night, lying on his back beneath a weight of 
darkness, one heavily craped figure, distinguishable through 
the gloom, as a blot on a black pad, accused the answering 
darkness within him, until his mind was dragged to go 
through the whole case by morning light ; and the com- 
passionate man appealed to common sense, to stamp and 
pass his delectable sophistries ; as, that it was his intense 
humaneness, which exposed him to an accusation of in- 
humanity : his prayer for the truly best to happen, which 
anticipated Mrs. Burman’s expiry. They were simple 
sophistries, fabricated to suit his needs, readily taking and 
bearing the imprimatur of common sense. They refreshed 
him, as a chemical scent a crowded room. 

All because he could not open his breast to Nataly, by 
reason of her feebleness ; or feel enthusiasm in the posses- 
sion of young Dudley ! A dry stick indeed beside him on 
the walk Westward. Good quality wood, no doubt, but 
dry, varnished for conventional uses. Poor dear Predi 
would have to crown it like the May-day posy of the urchins 
of Craye Parm and Creckholt! 

Dudley wished the great City-merchant to appreciate him 
as a diligent student of commercial matters : rivalries of 
Banks ; Poreign and Municipal Loans, American Bails, and 
Argentine; new Companies of wholesome appearance or 
sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born 
to bleat prostrate, like sheep on their backs in a ditch ; 
Trusts and Pounders; Breweries bursting vats upon the 
markets, and England prone along the gutters, gobbling, 
drunk for shares, and sober in the possession of certain of 
them. But when, as Colney says, a grateful England has 
conferred the Lordship on her Brewer, he gratefully hands- 


OF KATliRE AKD CIRCUMSTANCE 175 

over the establishment to his country ; and both may dis- 
regard the howls of a Salvation Army of shareholders. — 
Beaten by the Germans in Brewery, too I Dr. Schlesien 
has his right to crow. We were ahead of them, and they 
came and studied us, and they studied Chemistry as well ; 
while we went on down our happy-go-lucky old road ; and 
then had to hire their young Professors, and then to im- 
port their beer. 

Have the Germans more brains than we English ? Vic- 
tor’s blood up to the dome of his cranium knocked the 
patriotic negative. But, as old Colney says (and bother 
him, for constantly intruding!), tlie comfortably successful 
have the habit of sitting, and that dulls the brain yet more 
than it eases the person : hence are we outpaced ; we have 
now to know we are racing. Victor scored a mark for one 
of his projects. A well-conducted Journal of the sharpest 
pens in the land might, at a sacrifice of money grandly sunk, 
expose to his English how and to what degree their sports, 
and their fierce feastings, and their opposition to ideas, 
and their timidity in regard to change, and their execration 
of criticism applied to themselves, and their unanimous 
adoption of it for a weapon against others, are signs of a 
prolonged indulgence in the cushioned seat. Victor saw it. 
But would the people he loved ? He agreed with Colney, 
forgetting the satirist’s venom : to- wit, that the journalists 
should be close under their editor’s rod to put it in sound 
bold English ; — no metaphors, no similes, nor flowery in- 
I substantiality : but honest Saxon manger stuff ; and put it 
I repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration ; hammer- 
ing so a soft place on the Anglican skull, which is rubbed 
in consequence, and taught at last through soreness to re- 
flect. — A Journal? — with Colney Durance for Editor? 
— and called conformably The Whipping-Top ? Why not, 

' if it exactly hits the signification of the Journal and that 
' which it would have the country do to itself, to keep it 
going and truly topping ? For there is no vulgarity in a 
title strongly signifying the intent. Victor wrote it at 
night, naming Colney for Editor, with a sum of his money 
to be devoted to the publication, in a form of memorandum; 
and threw it among the papers in his desk. 

Young Dudley had a funny inquisitiveness about Dartrey 


176 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Fenellaii ; owing to Fredi’s reproduction or imitation of her 
mother’s romantic sentiment for Dartrey, doubtless : a bit 
of jealousy, indicating that the dry fellow had his feelings. 
Victor touched-off an outline of Dartrey’s history and char- 
acter: — the half-brother of Simeon, considerably younger, 
and totally different. Dartrey’s mother was Lady Char- 
lotte Kiltorne, one of the Clanconans ; better mother than 
wife, perhaps ; and no reproach on her, not a shadow ; only 
she made the General’s Bank-notes fly black paper. And 

— if you’re for heredity — the queer point is, that Simeon, 
whose mother was a sober-minded woman, has always been 
the spendthrift. Dartrey married one of the Hennen 
women, all an odd lot, all handsome. I met her once. 
Colney said, she came up here with a special commission 
from the Prince of Darkness. There are women who stir 
the unholy in men — whether they mean it or not, you 
know.” 

Dudley pursed to remark, that he could not say he did 
know. And good for Fredi if he did not know, and had his 
objections to the knowledge ! But he was like the men who 
escape colds by wrapping in comforters instead of trusting 
to the spin of the blood. 

She played poor Dartrey pranks before he buried — he 
behaved well to her ; and that says much for him ; he has a 
devil of a temper. I ’ve seen the blood in his veins mount 
to cracking. But there ’s the man : because she was a 
woman, he never let it break out with her. And, by 
heaven, he had cause. She couldn’t be left. She tricked, 
him, and she loved him — passionately, I believe. You 
don’t understand women loving the husband they drag 
through the mire ? ” 

Du&ey did not. He sharpened his mouth. 

Buried, you said, sir ? — a widower ? ” 

I ’ve no positive information ; we shall hear when he 
comes back,” Victor replied hurriedly. He got a drench- 
ing of all the damns in the British service from his Gen- 
eralissimo one day at a Eeview, for a trooper’s negligence 

— button or stock missing, or something; and off goes 
Dartrey to his hut, and breaks his sword, and sends in his 
resignation. Good soldier lost. And I can’t complain ; he 
has been a right-hand man to me over in Africa. But a 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 177 

man ought to have some control of his temper, especially a 
soldier/^ 

Dudley put emphasis into his acquiescence. 

Worse than that temper of Dartrey’s, he can’t forgive 
an injury. He bears a grudge against his country. You ’ve 
heard Colney Durance abuse old England. It’s three parts 
factitious — literary exercise. It ’s milk beside the con- 
tempt of Dartrey’s shrug. He thinks we ’re a dead people, 
if a people ; ‘ subsisting on our fat,’ as Colney says.” 

I am not of opinion that we show it,” observed Dudley. 

We don’t,” Victor agreed. He disrelished his com- 
panion’s mincing tone of a monumental security, and 
yearned for Dartrey or Simeon or Colney to be at his 
elbow rather than this most commendable of orderly citi- 
zens, who little imagined the treacherous revolt from him 
in the bosom of the gentleman cordially signifying full 
agreement. But Dudley was not gifted to read behind 
words and looks. 

They were in the Park of the dwindling press of car- 
riages, and here was this young Dudley saying, quite com- 
mendably : It ’s a pity we seem to have no means of 
keeping our parks select.” 

Victor dung Simeon Fenellan at him in thought. He 
remembered a fable of Fenellan’s, about a Society of the 
Blest, and the salt it was to them to discover an intruder 
from below, and the consequent accelerated measure in 
their hymning. 

Have you seen anything offensive to you ? ” he asked. 

^^One sees notorious persons.” 

Dudley spoke aloof from them — out of his cold attics,” 
Fenellan would have said. 

Victor ‘approved : with the deadened feeling common to 
us when first in sad earnest we consent to take life as it is. 
He perceived, too, the comicality of his having to resign 
himself to the fatherly embrace of goodness. 

Lakelands had him fast, and this young Dudley was the 
kernel of Lakelands. If he had only been intellectually a 
little flexible in his morality ! But no ; he wore it cap a 
pie, like a mediaeval knight his armour. One had to ap- 
prove. And there was no getting away from him. He 
was good enough to stay in town for the practice of the 

12 


178 


ONE OF OtJB CONQUEROBS 


opening overture of the amateurs, and the flute-duet, when 
his family were looking for him at Tunbridge Wells ; and 
almost every day Victor was waylaid by him at a corner 
of the Strand. 

Occasionally, Victor appeared at the point of interception 
armed with Colney Durance, for whom he had called in the 
Temple, bent on self-defence, although Colney was often as 
bitter to his taste as to Dudley’s. Latterly the bitter had 
become a tonic. We rejoice in the presence of goodness, 
let us hope; and still an impersonation of conventional 
goodness perpetually about us depresses. Dudley drove 
him to Colney for relief. Besides it pleased Nataly that 
he should be bringing Colney home ; it looked to her as if 
he were subjecting Dudley to critical inspection before he 
decided a certain question much, and foolishly, dreaded by 
the dear soul. That quieted her. And another thing, she 
liked him to be with Colney, for a clog on him ; as it were, 
a tuning-fork for the wild airs he started. A little pessi- 
mism, also, she seemed to like ; probably as an appeasement 
after hearing, and having to share, high flights. And she 
was, in her queer woman’s way, always reassured by his 
endurance of Colney’s company : — she read it to mean, 
that he could bear Colney’s perusal of him, and satiric 
stings. Victor had seen these petty matters among the 
various which were made to serve his double and treble 
purposes ; now, thanks to the operation of young Dudley 
within him, he felt them. Preferring Penellan’s easy 
humour to Colney’s acid, he was nevertheless braced by the 
latter’s antidote to Dudley, while reserving his entire oppo- 
sition in the abstract. 

Por Victor Kadnor and Colney Durance were the Optimist 
and Pessimist of their societ}^ They might have headed 
those tribes in the country. At a period when the omnibus 
of the world appears to its quaint occupants to be going 
faster, men are shaken into the acceptation, if not perform- 
ance, of one part or the other as it is dictated to them by 
their temperaments. Compose the parts, and you come nigh 
to the meaning of the Nineteenth Century : the mother of 
these gosling affirmatives and negatives divorced from har- 
mony and awakened by the slight increase of incubating 
motion to vitality. Victor and Colney had been champion 


OF KAT'ORE AKB CIRCUMSTANCE 


179 


duellists for the rosy and the saturnine since the former 
cheerfully slaved for a small stipend in the City of his 
affection, and the latter entered on an inheritance counted 
in niggard hundreds, that withdrew a briefless barrister 
disposed for scholarship from the forlornest of seats in the 
Courts. They had foretold of one another each the unful- 
filled; each claimed the actual as the child of his prediction. 
Victor was to have been ruined long back ; Colney the prey 
of independent bachelors. Colney had escaped his harpy, 
and Victor could be called a millionaire and more. Prophecy 
was crowned by Colney’s dyspepsia, by Victor’s ticklish 
domestic position. Their pity for one another, their warm 
regard, was genuine ; only, they were of different tempera- 
ments ; and we have to distinguish, that in many estimable 
and some gifted human creatures, it is the quality of the 
blood which directs the current of opinion. 

Victor played-off Colney upon Dudley, for his internal 
satisfaction, and to lull Nataly and make her laugh; but he 
could not, as she hoped he was doing, take Colney into his 
confidence; inasmuch as the Optimist, impelled by his exu- 
berant anticipatory trustfulness, is an author, and does 
things ; whereas the Pessimist is your chaired critic, with 
the delivery of a censor, generally an undoer of things. 
Our Optimy has his instinct to tell him of the cast of Pes- 
simy’s countenance at the confession of a dilemma — fore- 
seen ! He hands himself to Pessimy, as it were a sugar- 
cane, for the sour brute to suck the sugar and whack with 
the wood. But he cannot perform his part in return ; he 
gets no compensation : Pessimy is invulnerable. You waste 
your time in hurling a common tu-quoque, at one who hugs 
the worst. 

The three walking in the park, with their bright view, 
and black view, and neutral view of life, were a comical 
trio. They had come upon the days of the unfanned electric 
furnace, proper to London’s early August when it is not 
pipeing March. Victor complacently bore heat as well as 
cold : but young Dudley was a drought, and Colney a drug 
to refresh it; and why was he^ stewing in London? It was 
for this young Dudley, who resembled a London of the 
sparrowy roadways and wearisome pavements and blocks of 
fortress mansions, by chance a water-cart spirting a stale 


180 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 

water : or a London of the farewell dinner-parties, where 
London’s professed anecdotist lays the dust with his ten 
times told. Why was not Nataly relieved of her dreary 
round of the purchases of furniture ! They ought all now 
to be in Switzerland or Tyrol. Nesta had of late been 
turning over leaves of an Illustrated book of Tyrol, dear to 
her after a run through the Innthal to the Dolomites one 
splendid August; and she and Nataly had read there of 
Hofer, Speckbacker, Haspinger ; and wrath had filled them 
at the meanness of the Corsican, who posed after it as victim 
on St. Helena’s rock ; the scene in grey dawn on Mantua’s 
fortress-walls blasting him in the Courts of History, when 
he strikes for his pathetic sublime. 

Victor remembered how he had been rhetorical, as the 
mouthpiece of his darlings. But he had in memory prom- 
inently now the many glorious pictures of that mountain- 
land beckoning to him, waving him to fly forth from the 
London oven : — lo, the Tyrolese limestone crags with livid 
peaks and snow lining shelves and veins of the crevices ; 
and folds of pine-wood undulations closed by a shoulder of 
snow large on the blue ; and a dazzling pinnacle rising over 
green pasture- Alps, the head of it shooting aloft as the 
Wown billow, high off a broken ridge, and wide-armed in 
its pure white shroud beneath ; tranced, but all motion in 
immobility, to the heart in the eye; a splendid image of 
striving, up to crowned victory. And see the long valley- 
sweeps of the hanging meadows and maize, and lower vine- 
yards and central tall green spires! Walking beside young 
Dudley, conversing, observing too, Victor followed the 
trips and twists of a rill, that was lured a little further 
down through scoops, ducts, and scaffolded channels to 
serve a wainwright. 

He heard the mountain -song of the joyful water : a wren- 
robin- thrush on the dance down of a faun ; till it was caught 
and muted, and the silver foot slid along the channel, swift 
as moonbeams through a cloud, with an air of Whither 
you will, so it he on happy for service as in freedom. 
Then the yard of the inn below, and the rill- water twirling 
rounded through the trout-trough, subdued, still lively for 
its beloved onward : dues to business, dues to pleasure ; a 
wedding of the two, and the wisest on earth : — eh ? like 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 


181 


some one we know, and Nataly has made the comparison. 
Fresh forellen for lunch : rhyming to Fenellan, he had said 
to her ; and that recollection struck the day to blaze ; for 
his friend was a ruined military captain living on a literary 
quill at the time ; and Nataly’s tender pleading, Could 
you not help to give him another chance, dear Victor ? ” — 
signifying her absolute trust in his ability to do that or 
more or anything, had actually set him thinking of the In- 
surance Office ; which he started to prosperity, and Fen- 
ellan in it, previously an untutored rill of the mountains, if 
ever was one. 

Useless to be dwelling on holiday pictures : Lakelands 
had hold of him ! 

Colney or somebody says, that the greater our successes, 
the greater the slaves we become. — But we must have an 
aim, my friend, and success must be the aim of any aim ! — 
Yes, and, says Colney, you are to rejoice in the disappoint- 
ing miss, which saves you from being damned by your 
bullet on the centre. — You’re dead against Nature, old 
Colney. — That is to carry the flag of Liberty. — By clip- 
ping a limb ! 

Victor overcame the Pessimist in his own royal cranium- 
Court. He entertained a pronounced dissension with bach- 
elors pretending to independence. It could not be argued 
publicly, and the more the pity : — for a slight encourage- 
ment, he would have done it ; his outlook over the waves 
of bachelors and (by present conditions mostly constrained) 
spinsters — and another outlook, midnight upon Phlegethon 
to the thoughts of men, made him deem it urgent. And it 
helped the plea in his own excuse, as Colney pointed out to 
the son of Nature. That, he had to admit, was true. He 
charged it upon Mrs. Burman, for twisting the most un- 
selfish and noblest of his thoughts ; and he promised him- 
self it was to cease on the instant when the circumstance, 
which Nature was remiss in not bringing about to-day or 
to-morrow, had come to pass. He could see h^s Nataly’s 
pained endurance beneath her habitual submission. Her 
effort was a poor one, to conceal her dread of the day of the 
gathering at Lakelands. 

On the Sunday previous to the day. Dr. Themison ac- 
companied the amateurs by rail to Wrensham, to hear trial 


182 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


of the acoustics ” of the Concert-hall. They were a goodly 
company ; and there was fun in the railway-carriage over 
Colney’s description of Fashionable London’s vast octopus 
Malady-monster, who was letting the doctor fly to the tether 
of its longest fllament for an hour, plying suckers on him 
the while. He had the look, to general perception, of a 
man but half-escaped: and as when the notes of things 
taken by the vision in front are being set down upon tablets 
in the head behind. Victor observed his look at Nataly. 
The look was like a door aswing, revealing in concealing. 
She was not or did not appear struck by it : perhaps, if ob- 
servant, she took it for a busy professional gentleman’s 
holiday reckoning of the hours before the return train to 
his harness, and his arrangements for catching it. She 
was, as she could be on a day of trial, her enchanting 
majestic self again — defying suspicions. She was his true 
mate for breasting a world honoured in uplifting her. 

Her singing of a duet with Nesta, called forth Dr. Themi- 
son’s very warm applause. He named the greatest of con- 
traltos. Colney did better service than Fenellan at the 
luncheon-table : he diverted Nataly and captured Dr. Themi- 
son’s ear with the narrative of his momentous expedition of 
European Emissaries, to plead the cause of their several 
languages at the Court of Japan : a Satiric Serial tale, that 
hit incidentally the follies of the countries of Europe, and 
intentionally, one had to think, those of Old England. 
Nesta set him going. Just when he was about to begin, 
she made her father laugh by crying out in a rapture. 
Oh ! Delphica ! For she was naughtily aware of Dudley 
Sowerby’s distaste for the story and disgust with the damsel 
Delphica. 

Nesta gave Dr. Themison the preliminary sketch of the 
grand object of the expedition : indeed one of the eminent 
ones of the world ; matter for an Epic ; though it is to be 
feared, that our part in it will not encourage a Cis-Atlantic 
bard. To America the honours from beginning to end 
belong. 

So, then, Japan has decided to renounce its language, for 
the adoption of the language it may choose among the fore- 
most famous European tongues. Japan becomes the word 
for miraculous transformations of a whole people at the 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 


183 


stroke of a wand ; and let our English enrol it as the most 
precious of the powerful verbs. An envoy visits the prin- 
cipal Seats of Learning in Europe. He is of a gravity to 
match that of his unexampled and all but stupefying mission. 
A fluent linguist, yet an Englishman, the slight American 
accent contracted during a lengthened residence in the United 
States is no bar to the patriotism urging him to pay his 
visit of exposition and invitation from the Japanese Court 
to the distinguished Doctor of Divinity Dr. Bouthoin. The 
renown of Dr. Bouthoin among the learned of Japan has 
caused the special invitation to him ; a scholar endowed by 
an ample knowledge and persuasive eloquence to cite and 
instance as well as illustrate the superior advantages to 
Japan and civilization in the filial embrace of mother 
English. For to this it must come predestinated,” says the 
astonishing applicant. We seem to see a fitness in it,” says 
the cogitative Rev. Doctor. And an Island England in 
those waters, will do wonders for Commerce,” adds the 
former. We think of things more pregnant,” concludes 
the latter, with a dry gleam of ecclesiastical knowingness. 
And let the Editor of the Review upon his recent pamphlet, 
and let the prelate reprimanding him, and let the newspapers 
criticizing his pure Saxon, have a care ! 

Funds, universally the most convincing of credentials, are 
placed at Dr. Bouthoin’s disposal : only it is requested, that 
for the present the expedition be secret. ^‘Better so,” says 
pure Saxon’s champion. On a day patented for secrecy, and 
swearing-in the whole American Continent through the 
cables to keep the secret by declaring the patent, the Rev. 
Dr. Bouthoin, accompanied by his curate, the Rev. Mancate 
Semhians, stumbling across portmanteaux crammed with 
lexicons and dictionaries and other tubes of the voice of 
Hermes, takes possession of berths in the ship Polypheme, 
bound, as they mutually conceive, for the biggest adventure 
ever embarked on by a far-thoughted, high-thoughted, 
patriotic pair speaking pure Saxon or other. 

Colney, with apologies to his hearers, avoided the custom 
of our period (called the Realistic) to create, when casual 
opportunity offers, a belief in the narrative by promoting 
nausea in the audience. He passed under veil the Rev. 
Doctor’s acknowledgement of Heptune’s power, and the 


184 


ONE OF OFE CONQUERORS 


temporary collapse of Mr. Semhians. Proceeding at once to 
the comments of these high-class missionaries on the really 
curious inquisitiveness of certain of the foreign passengers 
on board, he introduced to them the indisputably learned, 
the very argumentative, crashing, arrogant, pedantic, dog- 
matic, philological German gentleman. Dr. Gannius, reeking 
of the Teutonic Professor, as a library volume of its leather. 
With him is his fair-haired artless daughter Delphica. An 
interesting couple for the beguilement of a voyage : she so 
beautifully moderates his irascible incisiveness ! Yet there 
is a strange tone that they have. What, then, of the polite, 
the anecdotic Gallic M. Falarique, who studiously engages 
the young lady in colloquy when Mr. Semhians is agitating 
outside them to say a word ? What of that out-pouring, 
explosive, equally voluble, uncontrolled M. Bobinikine, a 
Mongol Eussian, shaped, featured, hued like the pot-boiled, 
round and tight young dumpling of our primitive boyhood, 
which smokes on the dish from the pot ? And what of 
another, hitherto unnoticed, whose nose is of the hooked 
vulturine, whose name transpires as Pisistratus Mytharete? 
He hears Dr. Bouthoin declaim some lines of Homer, and 
beseeches him for the designation of that language. Greek, 
is it ? Greek of the Asiatic ancient days of the 'beginning 
of the poetic chants ? Dr. Gannius crashes cachinnation. 
Dr. Bouthoin caps himself with the offended Don. Mr. 
Semhians opens half an eye and a whole mouth. There 
must be a mystery, these two exclaim to one another in 
privacy. Delphica draws Mr. Semhians aside. 

Blushing over his white necktie, like the coast of Labra- 
dor at the transient wink of its Jack-in-the-box Apollo, Mr. 
Semhians faintly tells of a conversation he has had with 
the ingenuous fair one ; and she ardent as he for the thron- 
ing of our incomparable Saxon English in the mouths of 
the races of mankind. Strange ! — she partly suspects the 
Frenchman, the Eussian, the attentive silent Greek, to be 
all of them bound for the Court of Japan. Concurrents? 
Can it be? We are absolutely to enter on a contention 
with rivals ? Dr. Bouthoin speaks to Dr. Gannius. He is 
astonished, he says ; he could not have imagined it ! 

^^Have you ever imagined anything?’’ Dr. Gannius asks 
him. Entomologist, botanist, palaeontologist, philologist, and 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 


185 


at sound of horn a ready regimental corporal, Dr. Gannius 
wears gbod manners as a pair of bath-slippers, to rally and 
kick his old infant of an Englishman ; who, in awe of his 
later renown and manifest might, makes it a point of dis- 
cretion to be ultra-amiable ; for he certainly is not in train- 
ing, he has no alliances, and he must diplomatize; and the 
German is a strong one; a relative too; he is the Saxon’s 
cousin, to say the least. This German has the habit of push- 
ing past politeness to carry his argumentative war into the 
enemy’s country : and he presents on all sides a solid ram- 
part of recent great deeds done, and mailed readiness for the 
doing of more, if we think of assailing him in that way. We 
are really like the poor beasts which have cast their shells 
or cases, helpless flesh to his beak. So we are cousinly. 

Whether more amused than amazed, we know not. Dr. 
Gannius hears from our simpleton of the pastures,” as he 
calls the Eev. Doctor to his daughter, that he and Mr. 
Semhians have absolutely pushed forth upon this most 
mighty of enterprises naked of any backing from their 
Government ! Babes in the Wood that they are ! a la grace 
de dieu at every turn that cries for astutia, they show no 
sign or symbol of English arms behind them, to support — 
and with the grandest of national prizes in view ! — the 
pleading oration before the Court of the elect, erudites, we 
will call them, of an intelligent, yet half barbarous, people ; 
hesitating, these, between eloquence and rival eloquence, cun- 
ning and rival cunning. Why, in such a case, the shadow- 
nimbus of Force is needed to decide the sinking of the scales. 
But have these English never read their Shakespeare, that 
they show so barren an acquaintance with human, to say 
nothing of semi-barbaric, nature ? But it is here that we 
Germans prove our claim to being the sons of his mind. — 
Dr. Gannius, in contempt, throws off the mask : he also is 
a concurrent. And not only is he the chosen by election of 
the chief Universities of his land, he has behind him, as 
Athene dilating Achilles, the clenched fist of the Prince of 
thunder and lightning of his time. German, Japan shall 
be ! he publicly swears before them all. M. Ealarique 
damascenes his sharpest smile ; M. Bobinikine double- 
dimples his puddingest ; M. Mytharete rolls a forefinger 
over his beak ; Dr. Bouthoin enlarges his eye on a sunny 


186 


OISTE OF OUF CONQUERORS 


mote. And such is the masterful effect of a frank diplo* 
macy, that when one party shows his hand, the others find 
the reverse of concealment in hiding their own. 

Dr. Bouthoin and Mr. Semhians are compelled to suspect 
themselves to be encompassed with rivals, presumptively 
supported by their Governments. The worthy gentlemen 
had hoped to tumble into good fortune, as in the blessed 
old English manner. It has even been thus with us : un- 
helped we do it ! exclaims the Kev. Doctor. He is roused 
from dejection by hearing Mr. Semhians shyly (he has pub- 
lished verse) tell of the fair-tressed Delphica’s phosphorial 
enthusiasm for our galaxy -of British Poets. Assisted by Mr. 
Semhians, he begins to imagine, that he has in the person of 
this artless devotee an ally, who will, through her worship 
of our Poets (by treachery to her sire — a small matter) 
sacrifice her guttural tongue, by enabling him (through 
the exercise of her arts, charms, intrigues — also a small 
matter) to obtain the first audience of the Japanese erudites. 
— Delphica, with each of the rivals in turn, is very pretty 
Comedy. She is aware that M. Ealarique is her most re- 
doubtable adversary, by the time that the vast fleet of steam- 
boats (containing newspaper reporters) is beheld from the 
decks of the Folyjpheme puffing past Sandy Hook. 

There Colney left them, for the next instalment of the 
serial. 

hTesta glanced at Dudley Sowerby. She liked him for his 
pained frown at the part his countrymen were made to play, 
but did wish that he would keep from expressing it in a 
countenance that suggested a worried knot ; and mischie- 
vously she said : Do you take to Delphica ? ’’ 

He replied, with an evident sincerity, I cannot say I do.’^ 

Had Mr. Semhians been modelled on him ? 

One bets on the German, of course — with Colney 
Durance,’’ Victor said to Dr. Themison, leading him over 
the grounds of Lakelands. 

^^In any case, the author teaches us to feel an interest 
in the rivals. I want to know what comes of it,” said the 
doctor. 

There ’s a good opportunity, one sees. But, mark me, 
it will all end in satire upon poor Old England. According 
to Colney, we excel in nothing.” 


OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE 


187 


I do not think there is a country that could offer the 
entertainment for which I am indebted to you to-day.’’ 

Ah, my friend, and you like their voices ? The con- 
tralto ? ” 

Exquisite.” 

Dr. Themison had not spoken the name of Eadnor. 

Shall we see you at our next Concert-evening in town?” 
said Victor ; and hearing the privilege ” mentioned, his 
sharp bright gaze cleared to limpid. You have seen how 
it stands with us here ! ” At once he related what indeed 
Dr. Themison had begun speculatively to think might be 
the case. 

Mrs. Burman Eadnor had dropped words touching a hus- 
band, and of her desire to communicate with him, in the 
event of her being given over to the surgeons: she had said, 
that her husband was a greatly gifted man ; setting her 
head in a compassionate swing. This revelation of the 
husband soon after, was filling. And this Mr. Eadnor’s 
comrade’s manner of it, was winning: a not too self-justify- 
ing tone ; not void of feeling for the elder woman ; with a 
manly eulogy of the younger, who had flung away the 
world for him and borne him their one dear child. Victor 
took the blame wholly upon himself. It is right that you 
should know,” he said to the doctor’s thoughtful posture ; 
and he stressed the blame ; and a flame shot across his 
eyeballs. He brought home to his hearer the hurricane of 
a man he was in the passion : indicating' the subjection of 
such a temperament as this Victor Eadnor’s to trials of the 
moral restraints beyond his human power. 

Dr. Themison said: Would you — we postpone that as 
long as we can : but supposing the poor lady . . . ? ” 

Victor broke in : I see her wish : I will.” 

The clash of his answer rang beside Dr. Themison’s 
faltering query. 

We are grateful when spared the conclusion of a sen- 
tence born to stammer. If for that only, the doctor pressed 
Victor’s hand warmly. 

‘^I may, then, convey some form of assurance, that a 
request of the kind will be granted ? ” he said. 

She has but to call me to her,” said Victor, stiffening 
his back. 


188 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEROKS 


CHAPTER XX 

THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS 

Round the neighbourhood of Lakelands it was known that 
the day of the great gathering there had been authoritatively 
foretold as fine, by Mr. Victor Radnor ; and he delivered 
his prophecy in the teeth of the South-western gale familiar 
to our yachting month ; and he really inspired belief or a 
kind of trust ; some supposing him to draw from reserves 
of observation, some choosing to confide in the singularly 
winged sparkle of his eyes. Lady Rodwell Blachington i 
did ; and young Mrs. Blathenoy ; and Mrs. Fanning ; they : 
were enamoured of it. And when women stand for Hope, ' 
and any worshipped man for Promise, nothing less than 
redoubled confusion of him dissolves the union. Even 
then they cling to it under an ejaculation, that it might 
and should have been otherwise ; fancy partly has it other- i 
wise, in her cserulean home above the weeping. So it is 
good at all points to prophesy with the aspect of the radiant 
day foretold. 

A storm, bearing battle overhead, tore the night to 
pieces. Xataly’s faith in the pleasant prognostic wavered , 
beneath the crashes. She had not much power of heart 
to desire anything save that which her bosom disavowed. 
Uproar rather appeased her, calmness agitated. She 
wished her beloved to be spared from a disappointment, 
thinking he deserved all successes, because of the rigours 
inflicted by her present tonelessness of blood and being. 
Her unresponsive manner with him was not due to lack of 
fire in the blood or a loss of tenderness. The tender feel- 
ing, under privations unwillingly imposed, though will- 
ingly shared, now suffused her reflections, owing to a 
gratitude induced by a novel experience of him; known, 
as it may chance, and as it does not always chance, to both 
sexes in wedded intimacy here and there ; known to women 
whose mates are proved quick to compliance with delicate 
intuitions of their moods of nature. A constant, almost 
visible, image of the dark thing she desired, and was bound I 


THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS iSS 


not to desire, and was remorseful for desiring, oppressed 
her; a perpetual consequent warfare of her spirit and the 
nature subject to the thousand sensational hypocrisies 
invoked for concealment of its reviled brutish baseness, 
held the woman suspended from her emotions. She coldly 
felt that a caress would have melted her, would have been 
the temporary rapture. Coldly she had the knowledge 
I that the considerate withholding of it helped her spirit 
to escape a stain. Less coldly, she thanked at heart her 
I beloved, for being a gentleman in their yoke. It plighted 
them over flesh. 

He talked to her on the pillow, just a few sentences; 
and, unlike himself, a word of City affairs: “That fellow 
Blathenoy, with his increasing multitude of bills at the 
' Bank: must watch him there, sit there regularly. One 
rather likes his wife. By the way, if you see him near 
me to-morrow, praise the Spanish climate; don’t forget. 
He heads the subscription list of Lady Blachington’s 
I Charity.” 

Victor chuckled at Colney’s humping of shoulders and 
mouth, while the tempest seemed echoing a sulphurous 
' pessimist. “If old Colney had listened to me, when India 
gave proof of the metal and South Africa began heaving, 
he ’d have been a fairly wealthy man by now ... ha! it 
would have genialized him. A man may be a curmudgeon 
with money: the rule is for him to cuddle himself and 
take a side, instead of dashing at his countrymen all round 
and getting hated. Well, Colney popular, can’t be imag- 
ined; but entertaining guests would have diluted his acid. 
He has the six hundred or so a-year he started old bach- 
elor on; add his miserable pay for Essays. Literature! 
Of course, he sours. But don’t let me hear of bachelor 
. moralists. There he sits at his Temple Chambers hatch- 
ing epigrams . . . pretends to have the office of critic ! 
Honest old fellow, as far as his condition permits. I tell 
him it will be fine to-morrow.” 

“You are generally right, dear,” Hataly said. 

Her dropping breath was audible. 

Victor smartly commended her to slumber, with heaven’s 
[ blessing on her and a dose of soft nursery prattle. 

He squeezed her hand. He kissed her lips by day. 


190 ONE OF OtiR CONQUERORS 

She heard him sigh settling himself into the breast of 
night for milk of sleep, like one of the world’s good i 
children. She could have turned to him, to show him she 
was in harmony with the holy night and loving world, but 
for the fear founded on a knowledge of the man he was; 
it held her frozen to the semblance of a tombstone lady 
beside her lord, in the aisle where horror kindles pitchy 
blackness with its legions at one movement. Verily it 
was the ghost of Mrs. Burman come to the bed, between 
them. 

Meanwhile the sun of Victor Radnor’s popularity was 
already up over the extended circle likely to be drenched 
by a falsification of his daring augury, though the scud 
flew swift, and the beeches raved, and the oaks roared and 
snarled, and pine-trees fell their lengths. Fine to- 
morrow, to a certainty! he had been heard to say. The 
doubt weighed for something; the balance inclined with 
the gentleman who had become so popular: for he had 
done the trick so suddenly, like a stroke of the wizard; 
and was a real man, not one of your spangled zodiacs sell- 
ing for sixpence and hopping to a lucky hit, laughed at 
nine times out of ten. The reasoning went — and it some- 
what affected the mansion as well as the cottage — that 
if he had become popular in this astonishing fashion, 
after making one of the biggest fortunes of modern times, 
he might, he must, have secret gifts. You can’t foretell 
weather ! ” cried a pothouse sceptic. But the workmen 
at Lakelands declared that he had foretold it. Sceptics 
among the common folk were quaintly silenced by other 
tales of him, being a whiff from the delirium attending any 
mention of his name. 

How had he become suddenly so popular as to rouse in 
the mind of Mr. Caddis, the sitting Member for the divi- 
sion of the county (said to have the seat in his pocket), a 
particular inquisitiveness to know the bearing of his poli- 
tics ? Mr. Radnor was rich, true : but these are days 
when wealthy men, ambitious of notoriety, do not always 
prove faithful. to their class; some of them are cunning to 
bid for the suffrages of the irresponsible, recklessly 
enfranchised, corruptible masses. Mr. Caddis, if he had 
the seat in his pocket, had it from the support of a class 


THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS 191 


trusting him to support its interests: he could count on 
the landowners, on the clergy, on the retired or retiring 
or comfortably cushioned merchants resident about Wren- 
sham, on the many obsequious among electoral shopmen; 
annually he threw open his grounds, and he subscribed, 
patronized, did what was expected; and he was not pop- 
ular; he was unpopular. Why ? But why was the sun of 
this 23rd August, shining from its rise royally upon 
pacified, enrolled and liveried armies of cloud, more 
agreeable to earth's populations than his pinched appear- 
ance of the poor mopped red nose and melancholic rheumy 
eyelets on a January day! Undoubtedly Victor Kadnor 
risked his repute of prophet. Yet his popularity would 
have survived the continuance of the storm and deluge. 
He did this : — and the mystery puzzling the suspicious 
was nothing wonderful : — ■ in addition to a transparent 
benevolence, he spread a sort of assurance about him, that 
he thought the better of the people for their thinking well 
of themselves. It came first from the workmen at his house. 
“The right sort, and no humbug: likes you to be men.’’ 
Such a report made tropical soil for any new seed. 

Now, it is a postulate, to strengthen all poor common- 
ers, that not even in comparison with the highest need 
we be small unless we yield to think it of ourselves. Do 
but stretch a hand to the touch of earth in you, and you 
spring upon combative manhood again, from the basis 
where all are equal. Humanity’s historians, however, 
tell us, that the exhilaration bringing us consciousness of 
a stature, is gas which too frequently has to be adminis- 
tered. Certes the cocks among men do not require the 
process; they get it off the sight of the sun arising or a 
simple hen submissive : but we have our hibernating bears 
among men, our yoked oxen, cabhorses, beaten dogs; we 
have on large patches of these Islands, a Saxon population, 
much wanting assistance, if they are not to feel themselves 
beaten, driven, caught by the neck, yoked and heavy- 
headed. Blest, then, is he who gives them a sense of the 
pride of standing on legs. Beer, ordinarily their solitary 
helper beneath the iron canopy of wealth, is known to 
them as a bitter usurer ; it knocks them flat in their per- 
sons and their fortunes, for the short spell of recreative 


192 


ONE OF OtJR CONQUEROKS 


exaltation. They send up their rough glory round the name 
of the gentleman — a stranger, but their friend : and never 
is friend to be thought of as a stranger — who manages to 
get the holiday for Wrensham and thereabout, that they 
may hurl away for one jolly day the old hat of a doddered 
humbleness, and trip to the strains of the internal music 
he has unwound. 

Says he: Is it a Charity Concert? Charity begins at 
home, says he : and if I welcome you gentry on behalf of 
the poor of London, why, it follows you grant me the 
right to make a beginning with the poor of our parts down 
here. He puts it so, no master nor mistress neither could 
refuse him. Why, the workmen at his house were nigh 
pitching the contractors all sprawling on a strike, and 
Mr. Radnor takes train, harangues ’em and rubs ’em 
smooth; ten minutes by the clock, they say; and return 
train to his business in town; by reason of good sense and 
feeling, it was; poor men don’t ask for more. A working 
man, all the world over, asks but justice and a little rela^' 
ation — just a collar of fat to his lean. 

Mr. Caddis, M. P., pursuing the riddle of popularity, 
which irritated and repelled as constantly as it attracted 
him, would have come nearer to an instructive present- 
ment of it, by listening to these plain fellows, than he 
was in the line of equipages, at a later hour of the day. 
The remarks of the comfortably cushioned and wheeled, 
though they be eulogistic to extravagance, are vapourish 
when we court them for nourishment; substantially, they 
are bones to the cynical. He heard enumerations of Mr. 
Radnor’s riches, eclipsing his own past compute. A mer- 
chant, a holder of mines. Director of a mighty Bank, pro- 
jector of running Rails, a princely millionaire, and deter- 
mined to be popular — what was the aim of the man ? It is 
the curse of modern times, that we never can be sure of our 
Parliamentary seat; not when we have it in our pockets! 
The Romans have left us golden words with regard to the 
fickleness of the populace; we have our Horace, our Juve- 
nal, we have our Johnson; and in this vaunted age of 
reason it is, that we surrender ourselves into the hands of 
the populace! Panem et circenses ! Mr. Caddis repeated 
it, after his fathers; his fathers and he had not headed 


THE GEEAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS 193 

them out of that original voracity. There they were, for 
moneyed legislators to bewail their appetites. And it 
was an article of his legislation, to keep them there. 

Pedestrian purchasers of tickets for the Charity Con- 
cert, rather openly, in an envelope of humour, confessed 
to the bait of the Eadnor bread with bit of fun. Savoury 
rumours were sweeping across Wrensham. Mr. Eadnor 
had borrowed footmen of the principal houses about. 
Cartloads of provisions had been seen to come. An imme- 
diate reward of a deed of benevolence, is a thing sensibly 
heavenly; and the five-shilling tickets were paid for as if 
for a packet on the counter. Unacquainted with Mr. 
Eadnor, although the reports of him struck a summons to 
their gastric juices, resembling in its effect a clamorous 
cordiality, they were chilled, on their steps along the half- 
rolled new gravel-road to the house, by seeing three tables 
of prodigious length, where very evidently a feast had 
raged : one to plump the people — perhaps excessively 
courted by great gentlemen of late; shopkeepers, the vil- 
lagers, children. These had been at it for two merry 
hours. They had risen. They were beef and pudding on 
legs; in some quarters, beer amiably manifest, owing to 
the flourishes of a military band. Boys, who had shaken 
room through their magical young corporations for fresh 
stowage, darted out of a chasing circle to the crumbled 
cornucopia regretfully forsaken fifteen minutes back, and 
buried another tart. Plenty still reigned : it was the 
will of the Master that it should. 

We divert our attention, resigned in stoic humour, to 
the bill of the Concert music, handed us with' our tickets 
at the park-gates: we have no fight to expect refreshment; 
we came for the music, to be charitable. Signora Bianca 
Luciani: of whom we have read almost to the hearing her; 
enough to make the mistake at times. The grand violinist 
Durandarte: forcibly detained on his way to America. 
Mr. Eadnor sent him a blank cheque: — no! — so Air. Ttad- 
nor besought him in person: he is irresistible; a great 
musician himself; it is becoming quite the modern style. 
We have now English noblemen who ])lay the horn, the 
fife — the drum, some sa^M We may yet be Alerrie Eng- 
land again, with our nobles taking the lead. 

13 


194 


ONE OF OIJR CONQtJEROKS 


England's nobles as a musical band at the head of a 
marching and dancing population, pictured happily an old i 
Conservative country, that retained its members of aristoc- 
racy in the foremost places while subjecting them to down- 
right uses. Their ancestors, beholding them there, would 
be satisfied on the point of honour ; perhaps enlivened by 
hearing them at fife and drum. — | 

But middle-class pedestrians, having paid five shillings i 
for a ticket to hear the music they love, and not having j 
full assurance of refreshment, are often, latterly, satirical I 
upon their superiors; and, over this country at least, re- ' 
quire the refreshment, that the democratic sprouts in them 
may be reconciled with aristocracy. Do not listen to 
them further on the subject. They vote safely enough 
when the day comes, if there is no prseternaturally strong 
pull the other way. 

They perceive the name of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, 
fourth down the Concert-bill ; marked for a flute-duet with 
Mr. Victor Kadnor, Miss Nesta Victoria Eadnor accom- 
panying at the piano. It may mean? ... do you want a 
whisper to suggest to you what it may mean ? The 
father’s wealth is enormous; the mother is a beautiful 
majestic woman in her prime. And see, she sings: a 
wonderful voice. And lower down, a duet with her daugh- 
ter: violins and clarionet; how funny; something Hun- 
garian. And in the Second Part, Schubert’s Ave Maria — 
Oh! when we hear that, we dissolve. She was a singer 
before he married her, they say: a lady by birth: one of 
the first County families. But it was a gift, and she could 
not be kept from it, and was going, when they met — and 
it was love! the most perfect duet. For him she aban- 
doned the Stage. You must remember, that in their young 
days the Stage was many stages beneath the esteem .enter- 
tained for it now. Domestic Concerts are got up to 
gratify her; a Miss Fredericks: good old English name. 
Mr. Eadnor calls his daughter, Freddy; so Mr. Taplow, 
the architect, says. They are for modern music and 
ancient. Tannhduser, Wagner, you see. Pergolese. 
Flute-duet, Mercadante. Here we have him! — Duran- 
darte: Air Basque, variations — his own. Again, Sefior 
Durandarte, Mendelssohn. Encore him, and he plays 


THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS 195 

, you a national piece. A dark little creature a Life- 

E ^Liardsman could hold-up on his outstretched hand for the 
fteen minutes of the performance; but he fills the hall 
and thrills the heart, wafts you to heaven; and does it as 
though he were conversing with his Andalusian lady-love 
in easy whispers about their mutual passion for Spanish 
chocolate all the while : so the musical critic of the Tirra- 
Lirra says. Express trains every half hour from London; 
all the big people of the city. Mr. Eadnor commands 
them, like Eoyalty. Totally different from that old figure 
of the wealthy City merchant; young, vigorous, elegant, 
a man of taste, highest culture, speaks the languages of 
Europe, patron of the Arts, a perfect gentleman. His 
mother was one of the Montgomerys, Mr. Taplow says. 
And it was General Eadnor, a most distinguished officer, 
dying knighted. But Mr. Victor Eadnor would not take 
less than a Barony — and then only with descent of title 
to his daughter, in her own right. 

Mr. Taplow had said as much as Victor Eadnor chose 
that he should say. 

Carriages were in flow for an hour : pedestrians formed 
a wavy coil. Judgeing by numbers, the entertainment 
was a success; would the hall contain them? Marvels 
were told of the hall. Every ticket entered and was 
enfolded; almost all had a seat. Chivalry stood. It is a 
breeched abstraction, sacrificeing voluntarily and genially 
to the Fair, for a restoring of the balance between the 
sexes, that the division of good things be rather in the fair 
ones' favour as they are to think: with the warning to 
them, that the establishment of their claim for equality 
puts an end to the priceless privileges of petticoats. 

. \Yomen must be mad, to provoke such a warning; and the 
i majority of them submissively show their good sense. 

They send up an incense of perfumery, all the bouquets 
[ of the chemist commingled ; most nourishing to the idea of 
V woman in the nose of man. They are a forest foliage- 
j rustle of silks and muslins, magic interweaving, or the 
i mythology, if you prefer it. See, hear, smell, they are 
1 Juno, Venus, Hebe, to you. We must have poetry with 
I them ; otherwise they are better in the kitchen. Is there — 
i but there is not ; there is not present one of the chival- 


196 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


rous breeched who could prefer the shocking emancipated 
gristly female, which imposes propriety on our sensations 
and inner dreams, by petrifying in the tender bud of 
them. 

Colonel Corfe is the man to hear on such a theme. He 
is a colonel of Companies. But those are his diversion, 
as the British Army has been to the warrior. Fuellis 
idoneus^ he is professedly a lady^s man, a rose-beetle, and 
a line specimen of a common kind: and he has been that 
thing, that shining delight of the lap of ladies, for a spell 
of years, necessitating a certain sparkle of the saccharine 
crystals preserving him, to conceal the muster. He has 
to be fascinating, or he would look outworn, forlorn. On 
one side of him is Lady Carmine; on the other. Lady 
Swanage; dames embedded in the blooming maturity of 
England’s conservatory. Their lords (an Earl, a Baron) 
are of the lords who go down to the City to sow a title for 
a repair of their poor incomes, and are to be commended 
for frankly accepting the new dispensation while they 
retain the many advantages of the uncancelled ancient. 
Thus gently does a maternal Old England let them down. 
Projectors of Companies, Directors, Eounders; Eailway 
magnates, actual kings and nobles (though one cannot yet 
persuade old reverence to do homage with the ancestral 
spontaneity to the uncrowned, uncoroneted, people of our 
sphere) ; holders of Shares in gold mines. Shares in Afric’s 
blue mud of the glittering teeth we draw for English beauty 
to wear in the ear, on the neck, at the wrist; Bankers 
and wives of Bankers. Victor passed among them, chat- 
ting right and left. 

Lady Carmine asked him : “ Is Durandarte counted on ? ” 

He answered: ^‘1 made sure of the Luciani.” 

She serenely understood. Artistes are licenced people, 
with a Bohemian instead of the titular glitter, for the be- 
wildering of moralists; as paste will pass for diamonds 
where the mirror is held up to Nature by bold super- 
numeraries. 

He wished to introduce Nesta. His girl was on the 
raised orchestral flooring. Nataly held her fast to a 
music-scroll. 

Mr. Peridon, sad for the absence and cause of absence of 


THE GREAT ASSEIVIBLY AT LAKELANDS 197 


Louise cle Seilles, — summoned in the morning abruptly to 
Bourges, where her brother lay with his life endangered 
by an accident at Artillery practice, — Mr. Peridon was 
generally conductor. Victor was to lead the full force of 
amateurs in the brisk overture to Zampa, He perceived a 
movement of Nataly, Nesta, and Peridon. “They have 
come,” he said; he jumped on the orchestra boards and 
hastened to greet the Luciani with Durandarte in the 
retiring-room. 

His departure raised the whisper that he would wield 
the baton. An opinion was unuttered. His name for the 
flute -duet with the Hon. Dudley Sowerby had not provoked 
the reserve opinion; it seemed, on the whole, a pretty thing 
in him to condescend to do: the sentiment he awakened 
was not flustered by it. But the act of leading, appeared 
as an offlcial thing to do. Our souffle of sentiment will 
be seen subsiding under a breath, without a repressive 
word to send it down. Sir Eodwell Blachington would 
have preferred Radnor’s not leading or playing either. 
Colonel Corfe and Mr. Caddis declined to consider such 
conduct English, in a man of station . . . notwithstand- 
ing Royal Highnesses, who are at least partly English: 
partly, we say, under our breath, remembering our old 
ideal of an English gentleman, in opposition to German 
tastes. It is true, that the whole country is changeing, 
decomposing! 

The colonel fished for Lady Carmine’s view. — And Lady 
Swanage too ? Both of the distinguished ladies approved 
of Mr. Radnor’s leading — for a leading oft*. Women are 
pleased to see their favourite in the place of prominence 
— as long as Fortune swims him unbuffeted, or one should 
say, unbattered, up the mounting wave. Besides these 
ladies had none of the colonel’s remainder of juvenile Eng- 
lish sense of the manly, his adolescent’s intolerance of 
f the eccentric, suspicion and contempt of any supposed 
; affectation, which was not ostentatiously, stalkingly prac- 
i tised to subdue the sex. And you cannot wield a baton 
» without looking affected. And at one of the Colonel’s 
Clubs in town, only five years back, an English musical 
composer, who had not then made his money — now by 
I the mystery of events knighted I — had been (he makes 


198 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEKOES 


now fifteen thousand a year) black-balled. “Fiddler ? no; 
can’t admit a Fiddler to associate on equal terms with gen- 
tlemen.” Only five years back: and at present we are 
having the Fiddler everywhere. 

A sprinkling of the minor ladies also would have been 
glad if Mr. Kadnor had kept himself somewhat more 
exclusive. Dr. Schlesien heard remarks, upon which his 
weighty Teutonic mind sat crushingly. Do these English 
care one bit for music ? — for anything finer than material 
stuffs? — what that man Durance calls, “their beef, their 
beer, and their pew in eternity”? His wrath at their 
babble and petty brabble doubted that they did. 

But they do. Art has a hold of them. They pay for it; 
and the thing purchased grapples. It will get to their 
bosoms to breathe from them in time: entirely overcoming 
the taste for feudalism, which still a little objects to see 
their born gentleman acting as leader of musicians. A 
people of slow movement, developing tardily, their country 
is wanting in the distincter features, from being alwa3^s in 
the transitional state, like certain sea-fish rolling head 
over — you know not head from tail. Without the Welsh, 
Irish, Scot, in their composition, there would not be much 
of the yeast}^ ferment: but it should not be forgotten that 
Welsh, Irish, Scot, are now largely of their numbers; and 
the taste for elegance, and for spiritual utterance, for Song, 
na}", for Ideas, is there among them, though it does not 
everywhere cover a rocky surface to bewitch the eyes of 
aliens; — like Louise de Seilles and Dr. Schlesien, for ex- 
ample; aliens having no hostile disposition toward the peo- 
ple they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, 
that this people has a great history. Even such has the 
Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But 
the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wild- 
ness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear 
menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated 
moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, 
reminding him of the desert’s pasture. 

Nevertheless, where Strength is, there is hope: — it n ay 
be said more truly than of the breath of Life; which is 
perhaps but the bucket of breath, muddy with the sedi- 
ment of the well : whereas we have in Strength a hero, if a 


THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS 199 


malefactor; whose muscles shall haul him up to the light 
he will prove worthy of, when that divinity has shown 
him his uncleanness. And when Strength is not exercis- 
ing, you are sure to see Satirists jump on his back. 
Dozens, foreign and domestic, are on the back of Old Eng- 
land; a tribute to our quality if at the same time an irri- 
tating scourge. The domestic are in excess ; and let us own 
that their view of the potentate, as an apathetic beast of 
power, who will neither show the power nor woo the 
graces; pretending all the while to be eminently above 
the beast, and posturing in an inefficient mimicry of the 
civilized, excites to satire. Colney Durance had his 
excuses. He could point to the chief creative minds of 
the country for generations, as beginning their survey 
genially, ending venomously, because of an exasperating 
unreason and scum in the bubble of the scenes, called 
social, around them. Viola under his chin, he gazed 
along the crowded hall, which was to him a rich national 
pudding of the sycophants, the hypocrites, the burlies, 
the idiots ; dregs of the depths and froth of the surface ; 
bowing to one, that they may scorn another; instituting a 
Charity, for their poorer fawning fellows to relieve their 
purses and assist them in tricking the world and their 
Maker: — and so forth, a tiresome tirade: and as it was not 
on his lips but in the stomach of the painful creature, let 
him grind that hurdy-gurdy for himself. His friend 
Victor set it stirring: Victor had here what he aimed at! 
How Success derides Ambition! And for this he imper- 
illed the happiness of the worthy woman he loved! Ex- 
posed her to our fen-fogs and foul snakes — of whom one 
or more might be in the assembly now : all because of his 
insane itch to be the bobbing cork on the wave of the 
minute! Colney ’s rapid interjections condensed upon the 
habitual shrug at human folly, just when Victor, fronting 
the glassy stare of Colonel Corfe, tapped to start his 
orchestra through the lively first bars of the overture to 
Zampa, 

We soon perceive that the post Mr. Eadnor fills he thor- 
oughly fills, whatever it may be. Zainpa takes horse from 
the opening. We have no amateur conductor riding ahead : 
violins, ^cellos, piano, wind-stops: Peridon, Catkin, Pemp- 


200 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEROKS 


ton, Yatt, Cormyn, Colney, Mrs. Cormyn, Dudley Sowerby : 
they are spirited on, patted, subdued, muted, raised, 
rushed anew, away, held in hand, in both hands. Not 
earnestness worn as a cloak, but issuing, we see; not 
simply a leader of musicians, a leader of men. The halo 
of the millionaire behind, assures us of- a development in 
the character of England’s merchant princes. The homage 
we pay him flatters us. A delightful overture, masterfully 
executed; ended too soon; except that the programme 
forbids the ordinary interpretation of prolonged applause. 
Mr. Kadnor is one of those who do everything consum- 
mately. And we have a monition within, that a course of 
spiritual enjoyment will rouse the call for bodily refresh- 
ment. His genial nod and laugh and word of commenda- 
tion to his troop persuade us oddly, we know not how, of 
provision to come. At the door of the retiring-room, see, 
he is congratulated by Luciani and Durandarte. Miss 
Priscilla Graves is now to sing a Schumann, Down later, 
it is a duet with the Kev. Septimus Barmby. We have 
nothing to be ashamed of in her, before an Italian Operatic 
singer! Ices after the first part is over. 


CHAPTEE XXI 

DARTREY FENELLAN 

Had Nataly and Nesta known who was outside helping 
Skepsey to play ball with the boys, they would not have 
worked through their share of the performance with so 
graceful a composure. Even Simeon Eenellan was unaware 
that his half-brother Dartrey had landed in England. 
Dartrey went first to Victor’s office, where he found Skep- 
sey packing the day’s letters and circulars into the bag for 
the delivery of them at Lakelands. They sprang a chatter, 
and they missed the last of the express trains : which did 
not greatly signify, Skepsey said, '^as it was a Concert.” 
To hear his hero talk, was the music for him; and he 
richly enjoyed the pacing along the railway-platform, 


DAETHEY FENELLAN 


201 


Arrived on the grounds, they took opposite sides in a 
game of rounders, at that moment tossing heads or tails 
for innings. These boys were slovenly players, and were 
made unhappy by Skepsey^s fussy instructions to them in 
smartness. They had a stupid way of feeding the stick, 
and they ran sprawling; it concerned Great Britain for 
them to learn how to use their legs. It was pitiful for 
the country to see how lumpish her younger children were. 
Dartrey knew his little man and laughed, after warning 
him that his English would want many lessons before 
they stomached the mixture of discipline and pleasure. 
So it appeared : the pride of the boys in themselves, their 
confidence, enjoyment of the game, were all gone; and all 
were speedily out but Skepsey; who ran for the rounder, 
with his coat off, sharp as a porpoise, and would have got 
it, he had it in his grasp, when, at the jump, just over the 
line of the goal, a clever fling, if ever was, caught him a 
crack on that part of the human frame where sound is best 
achieved. Then were these young lumps transformed to 
limber, lither, merry fellows. They rejoiced Skepsey ^s 
heart; they did everything better, ran and dodged and 
threw in a style to win the nod from the future official 
inspector of Games and Amusements of the common people; 
a deputy of the Government, proposed by Skepsey to his 
hero with a deferential eagerness. Dartrey clapped him 
on the shoulder, softly laughing. 

System — Mr. Durance is right — they must have 
system, if they are to appreciate a holiday,” Skepsey said; 
and he sent a wretched gaze around, at the justification of 
some of the lurid views of Mr. Durance, in signs of the 
holiday wasted ; — impoverishing the country's manhood : 
in a small degree, it may be argued, but we ask, can the 
country afford it, while foreign nations are drilling their 
youth, teaching them to be ready to move in squads or 
masses, like the fist of a pugilist. Skepsey left it to his 
look to speak his thought. He saw an enemy in tobacco. 
The drowsiness of beer had stretched various hulks under 
trees. Ponderous cricket lumbered half-alive. Flabby 
fun knocked-up a yell. And it was rather vexatious to see 
girls dancing in good time to the band-music. One had a 
male-partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque of the 
thing he could not do. ^ 


202 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEROES 


Apparently, too certainly, none but the girls had a notion 
of orderly muscular exercise. Of what use are girls! 
Girls have their one mission on earth; and let them be 
healthy by all means, for the sake of it; only, they should 
not seem to prove that Old England is better represented 
on the female side. Skepsey heard, with a nip of spite 
at his bosom, a small body of them singing in chorus as 
they walked in step, arm in arm, actually marched: and 
to the rearward, none of these girls heeding, there were 
the louts at their burlesque of jigs and fisticuffs! “ Cherry 
Ripe,^^ was the song. 

‘^It ’s delightful to hear them! ” said Dartrey. 

Skepsey muttered jealously of their having been trained. 

The song, which drew Dartrey Fenellan to the quick of 
an English home, planted him at the same time in Africa 
to hear it. Dewy on a parched forehead it fell, England 
the shedding heaven. 

He fetched a deep breath, as of gratitude for vital re- 
freshment. He had his thoughts upon the training of our 
English to be something besides the machinery of capital- 
ists, and upon the country as a blessed mother instead of 
the most capricious of maudlin stepdames. 

He flicked his leg with the stick he carried, said: Your 
master’s the man to make a change among them, old 
friend ! ” and strolled along to a group surrounding two 
fellows who shammed a bout at single-stick. Vacuity in 
the attack on either side, contributed to the joint success 
of the defence. They paused under inspection ; and Dar- 
trey said: ‘‘You’re burning to give them a lesson, 
Skepsey.” 

Skepsey had no objection to his hero’s doing so, though 
at his personal cost. 

The sticks were handed to them; the crowd increased; 
their rounders boys had spied them and came trooping to 
the scene. Skepsey was directed to hit in earnest. His 
defensive attitude flashe*d, and he was at head and right 
and left leg, and giving point, recovering, thrusting madly, 
and again at shoulder and thigh, with bravos for reward 
of a man meaning business; until a topper on his hat, a 
cut over the right thigh, and the stick in his middle-rib, 
told the spectators of a scientific adversary; and loudly 


DARTREY FENELLAN 


203 


i 


i 


now the gentleman was cheered. An undercurrent of 
warm feeling ran for the plucky little one at it hot again 
in spite of the strokes, and when he fetched his master 
a handsome thud across the shoulder, and the gentleman 
gave up and complimented him, Skepsey had applause. 

He then begged his hero to put the previous couple in 
position, through a few of the opening movements. They 
were horribly sheepish at first. Meantime two boys had 
got hold of sticks, and both had gone to work in Skepsey’s 
gallant style; and soon one was howling. He excused him- 
self, because of the funny-bone, situated, in his case, 
higher than usual up the arm. And now the pair of men 
were giving and taking cuts to make a rhinoceros caper. 

^^Very well; begin that way; try what you can bear,’^ 
said Dartrey. 

Skepsey watched them, in felicity for love of the fray, 
pained by the disregard of science. 

Comments on the pretty play, indicating a reminiscent 
acquaintance with it, and the capacity for critical observa- 
tions, were started. Assaults, wonderful tricks of a slash- 
ing Life-Guardsman, one spectator had witnessed at an 
exhibition in a London hall. Boxing too. You may see 
displays of boxing still in places. How about a prize- 
fight ? — With money on it ? — Eh, but you don’t expect 
men to stand up to be knocked into rumpsteaks for noth- 
ing ? — No, but it ’s they there bets ! — Eight, and that ’s a 
game gone to ruin along of outsiders. — But it always was 
and it always will be popular with Englishmen! 

Great English names of young days, before the wintry 
shadow of the Law had blighted them, received their 
withered laurels. Emulous boys were in the heroic pos- 
ture. Good! sparring does no hurt: Skepsey seized a 
likely lad, Dartrey another. Nature created the Eing for 
them. Now then, arms and head well up, chest hearty, 
shoulders down, out with the right fist, just iDelow the level 
of the chin; out with the left fist farther, right out, except 
for that bit of curve; so, and draw it slightly back for 
wary — pussy at the spring. Firm you stand, feeling the 
muscles of both legs, left half a pace ahead, right planted, 
both stringy. None of your milk-pail looks; show us jaw, 
you bull-dogs. Now then, left from the shoulder, straight 


204 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


at right of head. — Good, and alacrity called on vigour in 
Skepsey’s pupil; Dartrey’s had the fist on his mouth before 
he could parry right arm up. Foul blow ! ” Dartrey cried. 
Skepsey vowed to the contrary. Dartrey reiterated his 
charge. Skepsey was a figure of negation, gesticulating 
and protesting. Dartrey appealed tempestuously to the 
Ring; Skepsey likewise, in a tone of injury. He 
addressed a remonstrance to Captain Dartrey. 

“Hang your captain, sir! I call you a coward; come 
on,” said the resolute gentleman, already in ripe form for 
the attack. His blue eyes were like the springing sunrise 
over ridges of the seas; and Skepsey jumped to his 
meaning. 

Boys and men were spectators of a real scientific set-to, 
a lovely show. They were half puzzled, it seemed so 
deadly. And the little one got in his blows at the gentle- 
man, who had to be hopping. Only, the worse the gentle- 
man caught it, the friendlier his countenance became. 
That was the wonder, and that gave them the key. But 
it was deliciously near to the real thing. 

Dartrey and Skepsey shook hands. 

“ And now, you fellows, you ’re to know, that this is 
one of the champions; and you take your lesson from him 
and thank him,” Dartrey said, as he turned on his heel 
to strike and greet the flow from the house. 

“Dartrey come!” Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by 
the hand in turn. Pure sweetness of suddenly awakened 
joy sat in Nataly’s eyes as she swam to welcome him. 
Nesta moved a step, seemed hesitating, and she tripped 
forward. “ Dear Captain Dartrey ! ” 

He did not say : “ But what a change in you ! ” 

“Jjf is blue-butterfly, all the same,” Nataly spoke to his 
look. 

Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction 
between the Hon. Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey 
Fenellan. The bronze face and the milky bowed to one 
another ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing. 

“So here you are at last,” Victor said. “You stay with 
us.” 

“ To-morrow or later, if you ’ll have me. I go down to 
my people to-night,” 


DARfREY EEKELLAK 205 

But you stay in England now ? ’’ Natalyas voice wavered 
on the question. 

There ^s a chance of my being off to Upper Burmah 
before the week 's ended. 

Ah, dear, dear ! sighed Eenellan ; and out of good 
comes evil! — as grandfather Deucalion exclaimed, when 
he gallantly handed up his dripping wife from the mud of 
the Deluge waters. Do you mean to be running and Jew- 
ing it on for ever, with only a nod for friends, Dart ?” 

Lord, Simmy, what a sound of home there is in your 
old nonsense I Dartrey said. 

His eyes of strong dark blue colour and the foreign 
swarthiness of his brows and cheeks and neck mixed the 
familiar and the strange, in the sight of the women who 
knew him. 

The bill-broker’s fair-tressed young wife whispered of 
curiosity concerning him to hTataly. He dressed like a 
sailor, he stood like a soldier: and was he married ? Yes, 
lie was married. 

Mrs. Blathenoy imagined a something in Mrs. Radnor’s 
tone. She could account for it; not by the ordinary read- 
ing of the feminine in the feminine, but through a husband 
who professed to know secrets. She was young in years 
and experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly awak- 
ened, enlivened by the hour, kindled by a novel figure of 
man, fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor 
should be the one to second her very innocent turn for a 
galopade; her own position allowed of any little diverting 
jig or reel, or plunge in a bath — she required it, for the 
domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such, 
without a day’s variation during the whole of the ten 
wedded months. Nataly gratified her spoken wish. 
Dartrey Eenellan bowed to the lady, and she withdrew 
him, seeing composedly that other and greater ladies had 
the wish ungratified. Their husbands were not so rich 
as hers, and their complexions would hardly have pleased 
the handsome brown-faced officer so well. 

Banquet, equal to a blast of trumpet, was the detaining 
word for the multitude. It circulated, one knows not 
how. Eloquent as the whiffs to the sniffs (and nowhere 
is eloquence to match it, when the latter are sharpened 


206 


ONE OF OliR CONQUERORS 


from within to without), the word was very soon over the 
field. Mr. Carling may have helped; he had it from 
Fenellan; and he was among the principal groups, claim- 
ing or making acquaintances, as a lawyer should do. The 
Concert was complimentarily a topic : Durandarte divine ! 
— did not everybody think so ? Everybody did, in default 
of a term for overtopping it. Our language is poor at 
hyperbole ; our voices are stronger. Gestures and heaven- 
sent eyeballs invoke to display the ineffable. Where was 
Durandarte now? Gone; already gone; off with the 
Luciani for evening engagements; he came simply to oblige 
his dear friend Mr. Eadnor. Cheque fifty guineas : hardly 
more on both sides than an exchange of smiles. Ah, these 
merchant-princes! What of Mr. Eadnor’s amateur instru- 
mentalists ? Amateurs, they are not to be named ; perfect 
musicians. Mr. Eadnor is the perfection of a host. Yes, 
yes; Mrs. Eadnor; Miss Eadnor too: delicious voices; 
but what is it about Mr. Eadnor so captivating! He is not 
quite English, yet he is not at all foreign. Is he very 
adventurous in business, as they say ? 

‘‘Soundest head in the City of London,’^ Mr. Blathenoy 
remarked. 

Sir Eodwell Blachington gave his nod. 

The crowd interjected, half -sighing. We ought to be 
proud of such a man ! Perhaps we are a trifle exaggerating, 
says its heart. But that we are wholly grateful to him, 
is a distinct conclusion. And he may be one of the great 
men of his time: he has a quite individual style of dress. 

Lady Eodwell Blachington observed to Colney Durance : 
“Mr. Eadnor bids fair to become the idol of the English 
people.^’ 

“If he can prove himself to be sufficiently the dupe of 
the English people said Colney. 

“Idol — dupe?” interjected Sir Eodwell, and his eye- 
brows fixed at the perch of Colney ’s famous “national in- 
terrogation ” over vacancy of understanding, as if from 
the pull of a string. He had his audience with him; and 
the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight 
of a planted barb. 

Colney was asked to explain. He never explained. He 
performed a series of astonishing leaps, like the branchy 


DABTREY FENELLAN 


207 


baboon above the traveller’s head in the tropical forest, 
and led them into the trap they assisted him to prepare for 
them. ^^No humour, do you say? The English have no 
humour ? ” a nephew of Lady Blachington’s inquired of 
him, with polite pugnacity, and was cordially assured, 
that “he vindicated them.” 

“And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coin- 
age,” a classical Church dignitary, in grammarian disgust, 
remarked to a lady, as they passed. 

Colney pricked-up his ears. It struck him that he 
might fish for suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument 
before the Elders of the Court of Japan. Dr. Wardan, 
whose recognition he could claim, stated to him, that the 
lady and he were enumerating words of a doubtfully legiti- 
mate quality now being inflicted upon the language. 

“The slang from below is perhaps preferable?” said 
Colney. 

“As little — less.” 

“But a pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must con- 
tinue to practise piracy, surely, or else take re-inforcements 
in slang, otherwise it is inexpressive of new ideas.” 

“Possibly the new ideas are best expressed in slang.” 

“ If insular. They will consequently be incommunicable 
to foreigners. You would, then, have us be trading with 
tokens instead of a precious currency ? Yet I cannot per- 
ceive the advantage of letting our ideas be clothed so racy 
of the obscener soil; considering the pretensions of the 
English language to become the universal. If we refuse 
additions from above, they force themselves on us from 
below. ” 

Dr. Wardan liked the frame of the observations, disliked 
the substance. 

“One is to understand that the English language has 
these pretensions?” he said: — he minced in his manner, 
after the well-known mortar-board and tassel type; the 
mouthing of a petrifaction : clearly useless to the pleadings 
of the patriotic Dr. Bouthoin and his curate. 

He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Don- 
nish sarcasm, and let him go, after dealing him a hard 
pellet or two in a cracker-covering. 

There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae ! 


208 ONE OE OUR CONQUERORS ; 

And he who feeds on them, to pay a price for their con- 
gratulations and flatteries, he is one of them himself! 

Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby. 
^‘Dear Mr. -^Durance, where is Captain Dartrey 

Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through 
a crowd, for an introduction of him to Captain Dartrey. 
That was perceptible. 

Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely: he struck 
across the path of the Rev. Septimus : again he had the ' ' 
hollow of her ear at disposal. 

“ Mr. Radnor was excellent. He does everything con- 
summately: really, we are all sensible of it. lam. He 
must lead us in a symphony. These light ‘ champagne 
overtures ’ of Drench composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls ( 
them, do not bring out his whole ability: — Zampa, Le 
pre aux’clercs, Masaniello, and the like.’^ 

“Your duet together went well.’’ 

“Thanks to you — to you. You kept us together.” 

“Papa was the runaway or strain-the-leash, if there was 
one.” 

“He is impetuous, he is so fervent. But, Miss Radnor, 

I could not be the runaway — with you . . . with you at ^ 
the piano. Indeed, I . . . shall we stroll down ? I love i 
the lake.” 

“You will hear the bell for your cold dinner very soon.” 

“I am not hungry. I would so much rather talk — hear 
you. But you are hungry? You have been singing: 
twice: three times! Opera singers, they say, eat hot sup- 
pers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice 
more effective. Yours is a voice that . . . something of 
the feeling one has in hearing cathedral voices: carry 
one up. I remember, in Dresden, once, a Draulein 
Ktihnstreich, a prodigy, very ^^oiing, considering her ac- 
complishments. But it was not the same.” 

Hesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long j 
with Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy. I 

“Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, T cannot 1 
take it as a milliner’s dumb figure wears the beautiful ] 
dress; I must point out my view of some of my merits.” | 

“Oh ! do, I beg, Miss . . . You have a Cliristian name: j 
and I too: and once . . . not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was ; 
Dudley I ” 


1 


DARTREY FEKELLAK 


209 


“Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated/’ 

“ And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always ! ” 

He was deepening to the Barmby intonation — appar- 
ently Cupid’s; but a shade more airily Pagan, not so fear- 
fully clerical. 

Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Penellan from Mr. 
and Mrs. Blathenoy. Dr. Schlesien was bowing with 
Dartrey. 

“And if Durandarte would only — but you are one with 
Miss Graves to depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the 
more classical Jachimo; whom we all admire; but you 
shall be just,” said she, and she pouted. She had seen 
her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group 
of City gentlemen. 

Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. 
He had not a chance; he retired, and swam into the salmon- 
net of seductive Mrs. Blathenoy’s broad bright smile. 

“It ’s a matter of mines, and they ’re hovering in the 
attitude of the query, like corkscrews over a bottle, pro- 
foundly indifferent to blood-relationship,” he said to her. 

“Pray, stay and be consoled by me,” said the fair young 
woman. “You are to point me out all the distinguished 
people. Is it true, that your brother has left the army ?” 

“ Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel 
Corfe, who does. England has her army still! ” 

“ His wife persuaded him ? ” 

“ You see he is wearing the black.” 

“ For her ? How very very sad ! Tell me — what a 
funnily dressed woman meeting that gentleman ! ” 

“Hush — a friend of the warrior. Splendid weather, 
Colonel Corfe.” 

“ Superb toilettes ! ” The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy 
dilatingly, advanced, bowed, and opened the siege. 

She decided a calculation upon his age, made a wall of it, 
smilingly agreed with his encomium of the Concert, and 
toned her voice to Fenellan’s comprehension : “ Did it occur 
recently ? ” 

“Months ; in Africa; I have n’t the date.” 

‘^Such numbers of people one would wish to know! 
Who are those ladies holding a Court, where Mr. Padnor 
is ? ” 


14 


210 


ONE OF OlJE CONQUERORS 


Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage — if it is your wish ? ” 
interposed the colonel. 

She dealt him a forgiving smile. And that pleasanL 
looking old gentleman ? ’’ 

Colonel Corfe drew-up. Fenellan said : ‘‘ Are we veterans 
at forty or so ? 

^^Well, it’s the romance, perhaps!” She raised her 
shoulders. 

The colonel’s intelligence ran a dog’s nose for a lady’s 
interjections. The romance ? ... at forty, fifty ? gone ? 
Miss Julinks, the great heiress and a beauty, has chosen him 
over the heads of all the young men of his time. Cranmer 
Lotsdale. Most romantic history ! ” 

She’s in love with that, I suppose.*’ 

‘^Now you direct my attention to him,” said Fenellan, 
the writing of the romantic history has made the texture 
look a trifle thready. You have a terrible eye.” 

It was thrown to where the person stood who had first 
within a few minutes helped her to form critical estimates 
of men, more consciously to read them. 

Your brother stays in England ?” 

The fear is, that he ’s off again.” 

Annoying for you. If I had a brother, I would not let 
him go.” 

How would you detain him ? ” 

Locks and bolts, clock wrong, hands and arms, kneeling 
— the fourth act of the Hugenots I ” 

He went by way of the window, I think. But that was 
a lover.” 

Oh! well ! ” she flushed. She did not hear the neglected 
and astonished colonel speak, and she sought diversion in 
saying to Fenellan : So many people of distinction are 
assembled here to-day ! Tell me, who is that pompous 
gentleman, who holds his arms up doubled, as he walks ? ” 

^^Like flappers of a penguin : and advances in jerks : he 
is head of the great Firm of Quatley Brothers : Sir Abra- 
ham ; finances or farms one of the South American Be- 
publics : we call him. Pride of Port. He consumes it and 
he presents it.” 

And who is that little man, who stops everybody ? ” 

People of distinction indeed! That little man-^^is 


DARtREY FENELLAN 


211 

your upper lip underrateing him ? . . . When a lady^s 
lip is erratically disdainful, it suggests a misuse of a 
copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted, punished — how ? 
— who can say ? — that little man, now that little man, 
with a lift of his little finger, could convulse the Bacon 
Market!’’ 

Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim : 

Bacon Market I ” she let fly a peal. Then she turned to a 
fresh satellite, a round and a ruddy, at her service ever,” 
Mr. Beaves Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan’s words. He, 
in unfeigned wonderment at such unsuspected powers, 
cried : Dear me ! ” and stared at the little man, making 
the pretty lady’s face a twinkling dew. 

He had missed the Concert. Was it first-rate ? Ecstasy 
answered in the female voice. 

Hem’d fool I am to keep appointments ! ” he muttered. 

She reproved him : ^^Eie, Mr. Urmsing; it’s the making 
of them, not the keeping ! ” 

‘‘Ah, my dear ma’am, if I’d had Blathenoy’s luck when 
he made a certain appointment. And he was not so much 
older than me ? The old ones get the prizes ! ” 

Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in 
triumph. The colonel’s eyebrows were up in fixity over 
sleepy lids. He brightened to propose the conducting of 
the pretty woman to the banquet. 

“ We shall see them going in,” said she. “ Mr. Eadnor 
has a French cook, who does wonders. But I heard him 
asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I’m sure he expected 
The Marigolds at his Concert.” 

“ Anything to oblige the company,” said the rustic ready 
chorister, clearing his throat. 

The lady’s feet were bent in the direction of a grassy 
knoll, where sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the 
sex eclipsed at a distance its roses and lilies. Fenellan 
saw Dartrey, still a centre of the merchantmen, strolling 
thither. 

“ And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine 
with us next week, Thursday, down here,” she murmured. 

I could venture to command ? — if you are not induced.” 

“Whichever word applies to a faithful subject.” 

“ I do so wish your brother had not left the army ! ” 


2l2 ONE OF OUR CONQUEROR^ 

You have one son of Mars.” 

Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down : he was 
not the antidote. She said to him : Luciani’s voice wears 
better than her figure.” 

The colonel replied: I remember,” and corrected him- 
self, ‘^at Eton, in jackets : she was not so particularly slim ; 
never knew how to dress. You beat Italians there ! She 
moved one as a youngster.” 

Eton boys are so susceptible ! ” 

Why, hulloa, don’t I remember her coming out ! — and 
do you mean to tell me,” Mr. Beaves Urmsing brutally 
addressed the colonel, ^Hhat you were at Eton when . . . 
why, what age do you give the poor woman, then ! ” He 
bellowed, ^^Eh ? ” as it were a bull crowing. 

The colonel retreated to one of his defensive corners. 

I am not aware that I meant to tell you anything.” 

Mr. Beaves Urmsing turned square-breasted on Eenellan: 

Fellow ’s a born donkey ! ” 

And the mother lived ? ” said Eenellan. 

Mr. Beaves Urmsing puffed with wrath at the fellow. 

Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding 
and felicitating Victor, he had sight of Eenellan conversing 
with fair ones, and it struck a light in him ; he went three 
steps backward, with shouts. Dam funny fellow ! eh ? 
who is he ? I must have that man at my table. Worth 
fifty Colonel Jackasses ! And I ’ve got a son in the 
Guards : and as much laugh in him, he 's got, as a bladder. 
But we’ll make a party, eh, Kadnor ? with that, friend o’ 
yours. Dam funny fellow ! and precious little of it going 
on now among the young lot. They ’re for seeing ghosts 
and gaping their jaws ; all for the quavers instead of the 
capers.” 

He sounded and thrummed his roguish fling-off for the 
capers. A second glimpse of Eenellan agitated the anec- 
dote, as he called it, seizing Victor’s arm, to have him out 
of earshot of the ladies. Delivery, not without its throes, 
was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to sympathetic 
convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves Urmsing’s counte- 
nance was crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring 
rhubarb-leaf. Unable to repeat the brevity of Eenellan’s 
rejoinder, he expatiated on it to convey it, swearing that it 


DARTREY FENELLAN 


213 


was the kind of thing done in the old days, when men were 
witty dogs : — pat ! and pat back ! as in the pantomime.” 

Repartee ! ” said Victor. He has it. You shall know 
him. You ’re the man for him.” 

He for me, that he is ! — ^ Hope the mother ^s doing 
well ? My card : ^ — eh ? Grave as an owl ! Look, there 
goes the donkey, lady to right and left, all ears for him — 
ha ! ha ! I must have another turn with your friend. 
‘ Mother lived, did she ? ’ Dam funny fellow, all of the 
olden time ! And a dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at 
my place, next week, say Wednesday, half-past six, for a 
long evening — flowing bowl — eh, shall it be?” 

Nesta came looking to find her Captain Dartrey. 

Mr. Leaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time. He 
spied Colonel Corfe anew, and Donkey ! ” rose to split the 
roar at his mouth, and full of his anecdote, he pursued 
some congenial acquaintances, crying to his host : Wednes- 
day, mind ! eh ? by George, your friend ’s gizzarded me for 
the day ! ” 

Plumped with the rich red stream of life, this last of the 
squires of old England thumped along among the guests, a 
very tuning-fork to keep them at their pitch of enthusiasm. 
He encountered Mr. Caddis, and it was an encounter. Mr. 
Caddis represented his political opinions ; but here was this 
cur of a Caddis whineing his niminy note from his piminy 
nob, when he was asked for his hearty echo of the praises 
of this jolly good fellow come to waken the neighbourhood, 
to be a blessing, a blazing hearth, a fall of manna : — and 
thank the Lord for him, you desert-dog ! He ’s a merchant 
prince, and he ’s a prince of a man, if you ’re for titles. Eh ? 
you ^assent to my encomiums.’ You’ll be calling me Mr. 
Speaker next. Hang me. Caddis, if those Parliamentary 
benches of yours are n’t freezing you from your seat up, 
and have got to your jaw — my belief ! ” 

Mr. Caddis was left reflecting, that we have, in the dis- 
pensations of Providence, when we have a seat, to submit to 
castigations from butcherly men unaccountably commis- 
sioned to solidify the seat. He could have preached a dis- 
course upon Success, to quiet the discontentment of the 
unseated. And our world of seats oddly gained, quaintly 
occupied, maliciously beset, insensately envied, needs the 


214 


ONE OF OUE CONQUERORS 


discourse. But it was not delivered, else would it have been 
here written down without mercy, as a medical prescript, 
one of the grand specifics. He met Victor, and, between his 
dread of him and the counsels of a position subject to stripes, 
he was a genial thaw. Victor beamed; for Mr. Caddis had 
previously stood eminent as an iceberg of the Lakelands’ 
party. Mr. Inchling and Mr. Caddis were introduced. The 
former in Commerce, the latter in Politics, their sustaining 
boast was, the being our stable Englishmen ; and at once, 
with cousinly minds, they fell to chatting upon the nothings 
agreeably and seriously. Colney Durance forsook a set of 
ladies for fatter prey, and listened to them. What he said, 
Victor did not hear. The effect was always to be seen, with 
Inchling under Colney. Fenellan did better service, really 
good service. 

Nataly played the heroine she was at heart. Why think 
of her as having to act a character ! Twice had Carling that 
afternoon, indirectly and directly, stated Mrs. Burman to be 
near the end we crape a natural, a defensible, satisfaction to 
hear of : — not wishing it : — poor woman ! — but pardon- 
ably, before man and all the angels, wishing, praying for 
the beloved one to enter into her earthly peace by the agency 
of the other’s exit into her heavenly. 

Fenellan and Colney came together, and said a word apiece 
of their friend. 

In his element ! The dear old boy has the look of a 
goldfish, king of his globe.” 

The dear old boy has to me the look of a pot on the fire, 
with a loose lid.” 

I may have the summons from Themison to-morrow, Victor 
thought. The success of the day was a wine that rocked the 
soberest of thoughts.' For, strange to confess, ever since the 
fall on London Bridge, his heart, influenced in some degree 
by Nataly’s depression perhaps, had been shadowed by 
doubts of his infallible instinct for success. Here, at a 
stroke, and before entering the house, he had the whole 
neighbourhood about him : he could feel that he and Nataly 
stood in the minds of the worthy people variously with the 
brightness if not with the warmth distinguishable in the 
bosom of Beaves Urmsing — the idea of whom gave Lake- 
lands an immediate hearth-glow. 


DARTREY FENELLAN 


215 


Armadine was thirteen minutes, by his watch, behind 
the time she had named. Small blame to her. He excused 
her to Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage, Lady Blachington, 
Mrs. Fanning, Sir Abraham Quatley, Mr. Danny (of Bacon 
fame) and the rest of the group surrounding Nataly on the 
mound leftward of the white terraces descending to the lake ; 
where she stood beating her foot fretfully at the word 
brought by Nesta, that Dartrey Fenellan had departed. It 
was her sunshine departed. But she went through her task 
of conversing amiably. Colney, for a wonder, consented to 
be useful in assisting Fenellan to relate stories of French 
Cooks ; which were, like the Eoyal Hanoverian oyster, of an 
age for offering acceptable flavour to English hearers. Nesta 
drew her mother’s attention to Priscilla Graves and Skepsey ; 
the latter bending head and assenting. Nataly spoke of the 
charm of Priscilla’s voice that day, in her duet with the Eev. 
Septimus. Mr. Pempton looked ; he saw that Priscilla was 
proselytizing. She was perfection to him but for one blot- 
ting thing. With grief on his eyelids, he said to Nataly or 
to himself : Meat ! ” 

Dear friend, don’t ride your hobby over us,” she replied. 

^^But it’s with that object they mount it,” said Victor. 

The greater ladies of the assembly were quite ready to 
accuse the sections, down to the individuals, of the social 
English (reserving our elect) of an itch to be tyrants. 

Colney was apologizing for them, with his lash: ^^It’s 
merely the sensible effect of a want of polish of the surface 
when they rub together.” 

And he heard Carling exclaim to Victor : ^^How comes the 
fellow here ! ” 

Skepsey had rushed across an open space to intercept a 
leisurely progressive man, whose hat was of the shape Victor 
knew; and the man wore the known black gaiters. In 
appearance, he had the likeness of a fallen parson. 

Carling and Victor crossed looks that were questions 
carrying their answers. 

Nataly’s eyes followed Victor’s. Who is the man? ” she 
said ; and she got no reply beyond a perky sparkle in his 
gaze. 

Others were noticing the man, who was trying to pass by 
Skepsey, now on his right side, now on his left. 


216 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


There ’ll be no stopping him/’ Carling said, and he 
slipped to the rear. 

At this juncture Armandine’s mellow bell proclaimed her 
readiness. 

Victor rubbed the back of his head. Kataly asked him : 

Dear, is it that man? ” 

He nodded scantly : Expected, expected. I think we 
have our summons from Armadine. One moment — poor 
soul ! poor soul ! Lady Carmine — Sir Abraham Quatley. ^ 
Will you lead? Lady Blachington, I secure you. One 
moment.” 

He directed Nataly to pair a few of the guests ; he 
hurried down the slope of sward. 

Nataly applied to Colney Durance. ^^Do you know the 
man ? — is it that man? ” 

Colney rejoined : ^^The man’s name is Jarniman.” 

Armadine’s bell swung melodiously. The guests had- 
grouped, thickening for the stream to procession. Mrs. 
Blathenoy claimed Eenellan ; she requested him to tell her 
whether he had known Mrs. Victor Eadnor many years. 
She mused. ^Wou like her?” 

One likes one’s dearest of friends among women, does 
one not? ” 

The lady nodded to his response. And your brother? ” 

Dartrey is devoted to her.” 

I am sure,” said she, yoiir brother is a chivalrous 
gentleman. I like her too.” She came to her sentiment 
through the sentiment of the chivalrous gentleman. Sink- 
ing from it, she remarked that Mr. Eadnor was handsome 
still. Eenellan commended the subject to her, as one to 
discourse of when she met Dartrey. A smell of a trap-hatch 
half open, afflicted and sharpened him. It was Blathenoy’s 
breath : husbands of young wives do these villanies, for the 
sake of showing their knowledge. Eenellan forbore to 
praise Mrs. Victor : he laid his colours on Dartrey. The 
lady gave ear till she reddened. He meant no harm, meant 
nothing but good ; and he was lighting the most destructive 
of our lower fires. 

Visibly, that man Jarniman was disposed of with ease. 
As in the street-theatres of crowing Punch, distance enlisted 
pantomime to do the effective part of the speeches. Jarni- 


CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN 217 


man’s liat was off, he stood bent, he delivered his message. 
He was handed over to Skepsey’s care for the receiving of 
meat and drink. Victor returned ; he had Lady Blaching- 
ton’s hand on his arm ; he was all hers, and in the heart of 
his company of guests at the same time. Eyes that had 
read him closely for years, were unable to spell a definite 
signification on his face, below the overflowing happiness of 
the hospitable man among contented guests. He had in 
fact something within to enliven him ; and that was the 
! more than suspicion, amounting to an odour of certainty, 
that Armandine intended one of her grand surprises for her 
master, and for the hundred and fifty or so to be seated at 
her tables in the unwarmed house of Lakelands. 


CHAPTER XXII 


CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN 


Armandine did her wonders. There is not in the wide 
range of the Muses a more responsive instrument than man 
to his marvellous cook ; and if his notes were but as flowing 
as his pedals are zealous, we should be carried on the tale 
of the enthusiasm she awakened, away from the rutted high- 
road, where History now thinks of tightening her girdle for 
an accelerated pace. 

The wonders were done : one hundred and seventy guests 
plenteously fed at tables across the great Concert Hall, down 
a length of the conservatory-glass, on soups, fish, meats, and 
the kitchen-garden, under play of creative sauces, all in the 
persuasive steam of savouriness ; every dish, one may say, 
advancing, curtseying, swimming to be your partner, instead 
of passively submitting to the eye of appetite, consenting to 
the teeth, as that rather melancholy procession of the cold, 
resembling established spinsters thrice-corseted in decorum, 
will appear to do. Whether Armandine had the thought or 
that she simply acted in conformity with a Frenchwoman’s 
direct good sense, we do require to smell a sort of animation 
in the meats we consume. We are still perhaps traceably 


218 


ONE OF OTJR CONQUEROKS 


related to the Adamite old-youngster just on his legs, who 
betrayed at every turn his Darwinian beginnings, and 
relished a palpitating unwillingness in the thing refreshing 
him ; only we young-oldsters cherish the milder taste for 
willingness, with a throb of the vanquished in it. And a 
seeming of that we get from the warm roast. The banquet 
to be fervently remembered, should smoke, should send out 
a breath to meet us. Victor’s crowded saloon-carriage was 
one voice of eulogy, to raise Armandine high as the finale 
rockets bursting over Wrensham Station at the start London- 
ward. How had she managed ? We foolishly question the 
arts of magicians. 

Mr. Pempton vras an apparent dissentient, as the man 
must be who is half a century ahead of his fellows in hu- 
maneness, and saddened by the display of slaughtered 
herds and their devourers. He had picked out his vege- 
table and farinaceous morsels, wherever he could get them 
uncontaminated ; enough for sustenance ; and the utmost he 
could show was, that he did not complain. When mounted 
and ridden by the satirist, in wrath at him for systemati- 
cally feasting the pride of the martyr on the maceration of 
his animal part, he put on his martyr’s pride, which as- 
sumed a perfect contentment in the critical depreciation of 
opposing systems ; he was drawn to state, as he had often 
done, that he considered our animal part shamefully and 
dangerously overnourished, and that much of the immoral- 
ity of the world was due to the present excessive indulgence 
in meats. Not in drink ? ” Miss Graves inquired. No,” 
he said boldly; ^^not equally; meats are more insidious. 
I say nothing of taking life — of fattening for that express 
purpose : diseases of animals : bad blood made : cruelty 
superinduced : — it will be seen to be, it will be looked back 
on, as a form of, a second stage of, cannibalism. Let that 
pass. I say, that for excess in drinking, the penalty is paid 
instantly, or at least on the morrow.” 

Paid by the drunkard’s wife, you should say.” 

Whereas intemperance in eating, corrupts constitution- 
ally, more spiritually vitiates, we think : on the whole, 
gluttony is the least-generous of the vices.” 

Colney lured Mr. Pempton through a quagmire of the 
vices to declare, that it brutalized ; and stammeringly to 


COKCEENS THE INTEUSIOK OF JAENIMAN 219 


adopt the suggestion, that our breeding of English ladies — 
those lights of the civilized world — can hardly go with a 
feeding upon flesh of beasts. Priscilla regretted that cham- 
pagne should have to be pleaded in excuse of impertinences 
to her sex. They were both combative, nibbed for epigram, 
edged to inflict wounds ; and they were set to shudder 
openly at one another’s practices ; they might have exposed 
to Colney which of the two maniacal sections of his English 
had the vaster conceit of superiority in purity ; they were 
baring themselves, as it were with a garment flung-off at each 
retort. He reproached them for undermineing their coun- 
trymen ; whose Ealstaff panics demanded blood of animals 
to restore them ; and their periods of bragging, that they 
should brandify their wits to imagine themselves Vikings. 

Nataly interposed. She was vexed with him. He let 
his eyelids drop : but the occasion for showing the prickli- 
ness of the bristly social English, could not be resisted. Dr. 
Peter Yatt was tricked to confess, that small annoyances 
were, in his experience, powerful on the human frame ; 
and Dr. John Cormyn was very neatly brought round to as- 
sure him he was mistaken if he supposed the homoeopathic 
doctor who smoked was exercising a destructive influence 
on the efficacy of the infinitesimal doses he prescribed ; Dr. 
Yatt chuckled a laugh at globules ; Dr. Cormyn at patients 
treated as horses ; while Mr. Catkin was brought to praise 
the smoke of tobacco as our sanctuary from the sex ; and 
Mr. Peridon quietly denied, that the taking of it into his 
nostrils from the puffs of his friend caused him sad silences. 
Nesta flew to protect the admirer of her beloved Louise. 
Her subsiding young excitement of the day set her doating 
on that moony melancholy in Mr. Peridon. 

No one could understand the grounds for Colney’s more 
than usual waspishness. He trotted out the fulgent and 
tonal Church of the Lev. Septimus ; the skeleton of wor- 
ship, so truly showing the spirit, in that of Dudley Sowerby^s 
family ; maliciously admiring both ; and he had a spar with 
Eenellan, ending in a snarl and a shout. Victor said to him : 

Yes, here, as much as you like, old Colney, but I tell you, 
you’ve staggered that poor woman Lady Blachington to- 
day, and her husband too; and I don’t know how many 
besides. What the pleasure of it can be, I can’t guess.” 


220 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEROES 


‘^Nor I/’ said Fenellan, ^^but I ’ll own I feel envious ; like 
the girl among a family of boys I knew, who were all of 
them starved in their infancy by a miserly father, that gave 
them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a drop of Pemp- 
ton to drink ; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found 
them in the drawing-room, four lank fellows, heels up, 
walking on their hands, from long practice ; and the girl 
informed me, that her brothers were able so to send the 
little blood they had in their bodies to their brains, and 
always felt quite cheerful for it, happy, and empowered to 
deal with the problems of the universe ; as they could n’t on 
their legs ; but she, poor thing, was forbidden to do the 
same ! And I ’m like her. I care for decorum too much to 
get the brain to act on Colney’s behaviour ; but I see it 
enraptures him and may be comprehensible to the topsy- 
turvey.” 

Victor rubbed hands. It was he who filled Colney’s bag 
of satiric spite. In addition to the downright lunacy of the 
courting of country society, by means of the cajolements 
witnessed this day, a suspicion that Victor was wearing a 
false face over the signification of Jarniman’s visit and meant 
to deceive the trustful and too-devoted loving woman he 
seemed bound to wreck, irritated the best of his nature. He 
had a resolve to pass an hour with the couple, and speak and 
insist on hearing plain words before the night had ended. 
But Fenellan took it out of him. Victor’s show of a perfect 
contentment emulating Pempton’s, incited Colney to some of 
his cunning rapier-thrusts with his dancing adversary ; and 
the heat which is planted in us for the composition of those 
cool epigrams, will not allow plain words to follow. Or, 
handing him over to the police of the Philistines, you may 
put it, that a habit of assorting spices will render an earnest 
simplicity distasteful. He was invited by Hataly to come 
home with them ; her wish for his presence, besides personal, 
was moved by an intuition, that his counsel might specially 
benefit them. He shrugged ; he said he had work at his 
chambers. 

Work ! ” Victor ejaculated : he never could reach to a 
right comprehension of labour, in regard to the very unre- 
munerative occupation of literature. Colney he did not want, 
and he let him go, as Nataly noticed, without a sign of the 


Concerns the intrusion of jarnevian 221 

reluctance he showed when the others, including Fenellan, 
excused themselves. 

^^So : we ’re alone ?” he said, when the door of the hall 
had closed on them. He kept Hesta talking of the success 
of the day until she, observing her mother’s look, simulated 
the setting-in of a frenzied yawn. She was kissed, and she 
tripped to her bed. 

^^Now we are alone,’^ Hataly said. 

Well, dear, and the day was, you must own . . he 
sought to trifle with her heavy voice ; but she recalled him : 
^Wictor ! ” and the naked anguish in her cry of his name 
was like a foreign world threatening the one he filled. 

^^Ah, yes; that man, that Jarniman. You saw him, I 
remember. You recollected him ? — stouter than he was. In 
her service ever since. Well, a little drop of bitter, perhaps : 
no harm, tonic.” 

Victor, is she very ill ? ” 

My love, don’t feel at your side : she is ill, ill, not the 
extreme case : not yet : old and ill. I told Skepsey to give 
the man refreshment : he had to do his errand.” 

What ? why did he come ? ” 

Curious ; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and 
appears to have outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it. 
But if that woman thinks of intimidating me now ! — ” His 
eyes brightened ; he had sprung from evasions. Living in 
flagrant sin, she says : you and I ! She will not have it ; 
warns me. Heard this day at noon of company at Lakelands. 
Jarniman off at once. Are to live in obscurity; — you and 
I ! if together ! Dictates from her death-bed — I suppose 
her death-bed.” 

Dearest,” Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, may 
we not think that she may be right ? ” 

An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming her- 
self wife when she is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs 
for blood, hanging-on to blast the healthy and vigorous ! I 
remember old Colney’s once, in old days, calling that kind of 
marriage a sarcophagus. It was tome. There I lay — see 
myself lying ! wasting ! Think what you can good of her, 
by all means ! From her bed ! despatches that Jarniman to 
me from her bedside, with the word, that she cannot in her 
conscience allow — what imposition was it I practised ? . . . 


222 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


flagrant sin ? — it would have been an infinitely viler. . . . 
She is the cause of suffering enough : I bear no more from 
her ; I We come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands : 
she has taken one of her hatreds to the place. She might 
have written, might have sent me a gentleman, privately. 
No : it must be done in dramatic style — for effect : her con- 
fidential — lawyer ? — doctor ? — butler ! Perhaps to frighten . 
me : — the boy she knew, and — poor soul ! I don’t mean to 
abuse her : but such conduct as this is downright brutal. I 
laugh at it, I snap my fingers. I can afford to despise it. 
Only I do say it deserves to be called abominable.” 

Victor, has she used a threat ? ” 

Am I brought to listen to any of her threats ! — Funny 
thing, I ’m certain that woman never can think of me except 
as the boy she knew. 1 saw her first when she was first a 
widow. She would keep talking to me of the seductions of 
the metropolis — kept informing me I was a young man . . . 
shaking her head. I ’ve told you. She — well, I know we 
are mixtures, women as well as men. I can, I hope, grant 
the same — I believe I can — allowances to women as to 
men ; we are poor creatures, all of us — in one sense : though 
I won’t give Colney his footing ; there ’s a better way of 
reading us. I hold fast to Nature. No violation of Nature, 
my good Colney ! We can live the lives of noble creatures ; 
and I say that happiness was meant for us ; — just as, when 
you sit down to your dinner, you must do it cheerfully, and 
you make good blood : otherwise all ’s wrong. There ’s the 
right answer to Colney ! But when a woman like that . . . 
and marries a bo}^ : well, twenty-one — not quite that : and an 
innocent, a positive innocent — it may seem incredible, after 
a term of school-life : it was a fact : I can hardly understand 
it myself when I look back. Marries him ! And then sets 
to work to persecute him, because he has blood in his veins, 
because he worships beauty ; because he seeks a real mar- 
riage, a real mate. And, I say it ! — let the world take its 
own view, the ■world is wrong ! — because he preferred a 
virtuous life to the kind of life she would, she must — why, 
necessarily ! — have driven him to, with a mummy’s grain of 
nature in his body. And I am made of flesh, I admit it.” 

Victor, dearest, her threat concerns only your living at 
Lakelands.” 


CONCERKS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN 223 


^^Pray, don’t speak excitedly, my love/^ he replied to the 
woman whose tones had been subdued to scarce more than 
waver. You see how I meet it : water off a duck’s back, 
or Indian solar beams on the skin of a Hindoo ! I despise 
it — hardly worth contempt; — But, come : our day was a 
good one. Penellan worked well. Old Colney was Colney 
Durance, of course. He did no real mischief.” 

And you will not determine to enter Lakelands — not 
yet, dear ? ” said N'ataly. 

My own girl, leave it- all to me.” 

But, Victor, I must, must know.” 

See the case. You have lots of courage. We can’t 
withdraw. Her intention is mischief. I believe the 
woman keeps herself alive for it : we Ve given her another 
lease ! — though it can only be for a very short time ; Themi- 
son is precise ; Carling too. If we hold back — I have great 
faith in Themison — the woman’s breath on us is confirmed. 
We go down, then ; complete the furnishing, quite leisurely ; 
accept — listen — accept one or two invitations : impossible 
to refuse ! — but they are accepted ! — and we defy her : — 
a crazy old creature : imagines herself the wife of the ex- 
Premier, widow of Prince Le Boo, engaged to the Chinese 
Ambassador, et csetera. Leave the tussle with that woman 
to me. No, we don’t repeat the error of Craye Farm and 
Creckholt. And here we have stout friends. Not to speak 
of Beaves Urmsing : a picture of Old Christmas England ! 
You took to him ? — must have taken to Beaves Urmsing ! 
The Marigolds I And Sir Kodwell and Lady Blachington 
are altogether above the mark of Sir Humphrey and Lady 
Pottil, and those half and half Mountneys. There ’s a 
warm centre of home in Lakelands. But I know my 
Nataly : she is thinking of our girl. Here is the plan : We 
stand our ground : my dear soul won’t forsake me : only 
there ’s the thought of Fredi, in the event . . . improbable 
enough. I lift Fredi out of the atmosphere awhile ; she 
goes to my cousins the Duvidney ladies.” 

Nataly was hit by a shot. Can you imagine it, Victor ? ” 
“ Eegard it as done.” 

They will surely decline ! ” 

Their feeling for General Eadnor is a worship.” 

All the more . . . ? ” 


224 


ONE OF OUE CONQUERORS 


The son inherits it. He goes to them personally. Have 
you ever known me personally fail ? Fredi stays at Moors- 
edge for a month or two. Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney 
will give her a taste of a new society ; good for the girl. 
All these little shiftings can be turned to good. Meantime, 
I say, we stand our ground : but you are not to be worried ; 
for though we have gone too far to recede, we need not and 
we will not make the entry iuto Lakelands until — you 
know : that is, auspiciously, to suit you in every way. 
Thus I provide to meet contingencies. What one may 
really fancy is, that the woman did but threaten. There ’s 
her point of view to be considered : silly, crazy ; but one 
sees it. We are not sure that she struck a blow at Craye or 
Creckholt. I wonder she never wrote. She was frightened, 
when she came to manage her property, of signing her 
name to anything. Absurd, that sending of Jarniiiian ! 
However, it ’s her move ; we make a corresponding dis- 
position of our chessmen.” 

And I am to lose my FTesta for a month ?” Nataly said, 
after catching here and there at the fitful gleams of truce or 
comfort dropped from his words. And simultaneously, the 
reproach of her mind to her nature for again and so con- 
stantly yielding to the domination of his initiative — unable 
to find the w’ords, even the ideas, to withstand him, — 
brought big tears. Angry at herself both for the internal 
feebleness and the exhibition of it, she blinked and begged 
excuse. There might be nothing that should call her to 
resist him. She could not do much worse than she had done 
to-day. The reflection, that to-day she had been actually 
sustained by the expectation of a death to come, diminished 
her estimate of to-morrow’s burden on her endurance, in 
making her seem a less criminal woman, who would have 
no such expectation : — which was virtually a stab at a 
fellow creature’s future. Her head was acute to work in 
the direction of the casuistries and the sensational webs 
and films. Facing Victor, it was a block. 

But the thought came : how would she meet those people 
about Lakelands, without support of the recent guilty whis- 
pers ! She said coldly, her heart shaking her : You think 
there has been a recovery ? ” 

Invalids are up and down. They are — well, no \ I 


CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNImAN 225 

should think she dreads the . . he kept surgeon out 
of hearing. Or else she means this for the final stroke : 
^ though I hn lying here, I can still make him feel.’ That, 
or — poor woman — she has her notions of right and 
wrong.” 

Could we not now travel for a few weeks, Victor ? ” 

Certainly, dear; we will, after we have kept our en- 
gagements to dine — I accepted — with the Blathenoys, the 
Blachingtons, Beaves Urmsing.” 

Nataly’s vision of the peaceful lost little dairy cottage 
swelled to brilliance, like the large tear at the fall ; darken- 
ing under her present effort to comprehend the necessity it 
was for him to mix and be foremost with the world. Un- 
able to grasp it perfectly in mind, her compassionate love 
embraced it : she blamed herself for being the obstruction 
to him. 

Very well,” she said on a sigh. ^^Then we shall not 
have to let our girl go from us ? ” 

Just a few weeks. In the middle of dinner, I scribbled 
a telegram to the Duvidneys, for Skepsey to take.” 

Speaking of Nesta ? ” 

‘^Of my coming to-morrow. They won’t stop me. I 
dine with them, sleep at the Wells ; hotel for a night. We 
are to be separated for a night.” 

She laid her hand in his and gave him a passing view of 
her face: -^^For two, dear. Iain . . . that man’s visit — 
rather shaken : I shall have a better chance of sleeping if 
I know I am not disturbing you.” 

She was firm ; and they kissed and parted. Each had an 
imphrased speculation upon the power of Mrs. Burmaii to 
put division between them. 


15 


226 


ONE OF OtJK CONQtTEKOES 


CHAPTEE XXIII 

TREATS OF THE LADIES’ LAPDOG TASSO FOR AN INSTANCE OF 

MOMENTOUS EFFECTS PRODUCED BY VERY MINOR CAUSES 

The maiden ladies Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney were 
thin-sweet old-fashioned grey gentlewomen, demurely con- 
scious of their excellence and awake to the temptation in 
the consciousness, who imposed a certain reflex primness on 
the lips of the world when addressing them or when allud- 
ing to them. For their appearance was picturesque of the 
ancestral time, and their ideas and scrupulousness of de- 
livery suggested the belated in ripeness ; orchard apples 
under a snow-storm ; or any image that will ceremoniously 
convey the mind’s profound appreciation together with the 
tooth’s panic dread of tartness. They were by no means 
tart ; only, as you know, the tooth is apprehensively ner- 
vous ; an uninviting sign will set it on edge. Even the pen 
which would sketch them has a spell on it and must don its 
coat of ofiice, walk the liveried footman behind them. 

Their wealth, their deeds of charity, their modesty, their 
built grey locks, their high repute ; a Chippendale ele- 
gance ” in a quaintly formal correctness, that they had, as 
Colney Durance called it, — gave them some queenliness, and 
allowed them to claim the ear as an oracle and banish re- 
bellious argument. Intuitive knowledge, assisted by the 
Eev. Stuart Eem and the Eev. Abram Posterley, enabled 
them to pronounce upon men and things ; not without effect; 
their country owned it; the foreigner beheld it. Xor were 
they corrupted by the servility of the surrounding ear. 
They were good women, striving to be humbly good. They 
might, for all the little errors they nightly unrolled to their 
perceptions, have stood before the world for a study in the 
white of our humanity. And this may be but a washed 
wall, it is true : revolutionary sceptics are measuring the 
depths of it. But the hue refreshes, the world admires ; 
and we know it an object of aim to the bettermost of the 
wealthy. If, happily, complacent circumstances have lifted 
us to the clean paved platform out of grip of puddled clay 


THE ladies’ LAPDOG TASSO 227 

and bespattering wheeltracks, we get our chance of coming 
to it. 

Possessing, for example, nine thousand pounds per annum 
in Consols, and not expending the whole of it upon our 
luxuries, we are, without further privation, near to kindling 
the world’s enthusiasm for whiteness. Yet there, too, we 
find, that character has its problems to solve; there are 
shades in salt. We must be charitable, but we should be 
just ; we give to the poor of the land, but we are eminently 
the friends of our servants ; duty to mankind diverts us 
not from the love we bear to our dog ; and with a pathetic 
sorrow for sin, we discard it from sight and hearing. We 
hate dirt. Having said so much, having shown it, by seal- 
ing the mouth of Mr. Stuart E-em and iceing the veins of 
Mr. Abram Posterley, in relation to a dreadful public case 
and a melancholy private, we have a pleased sense of entry 
into the world’s ideal. 

At the same time, we protest our uuworthiness. Acknowl- 
edgeing that they were not purely spotless, these ladies gen- 
uinely took the tiny fly-spot for a spur to purification ; and 
they viewed it as a patch to raise in relief their goodness. 
They gazed on it, saw themselves in it, and veiled it : warned 
of the cunning of an oft-defeated Tempter. 

To do good and sleep well, was their sowing and their 
reaping. Uneasy consciences could not have slept. The 
sleeping served for proof of an accurate reckoning and an 
expungeing of the day’s debits. They differed in opinion 
now and then, as we see companion waves of the river, 
blown by a gust, roll a shadow between them ; and almost 
equally transient were their differences with a world that 
they condemned when they could not feel they (as an em- 
bodiment of their principles) were leading it. The English 
world at times betrayed a restiveness in the walled path- 
way of virtue ; for, alas, it closely neighbours the French ; 
only a Channel, often dangerously smooth, to divide ; but 
it is not perverted for long ; and the English Funds are 
always constant and a tower. Would they be suffered to 
be so, if libertinism were in the ascendant ? 

Colney Durance was acquainted with the Duvidney ladies. 
Hearing of the journey to them and the purport of it, he 
said, with the mask upon glee: ^^Then Victor has met his ■ 


228 


ONE OP OUR CONQUERORS 


match Nataly had sent for him to dine with her in 
Victor’s absence: she was far from grieved, as to the re- 
sult, by his assurance to her, that Victor had not a chance. 
Coliiey thought so. Just like him ! to be off gaily to try 
and overcome or come over the greatest power in England.” 
They were England herself ; the squat old woman she has 
become by reason of her overlapping numbers of the com- 
fortable fund-holder annuitants: a vast body of passives 
and negatives, living by precept, according to rules of pre- 
cedent, and supposing themselves to be righteously guided 
because of their continuing undisturbed. Them he branded, 
as hypocritical materialists, and the country for pride in 
her sweetmeat plethora of them : — mixed with an ancient 
Hebrew fear of offence to an inscrutable Lord, eccentrically 
appeasable through the dreary iteration of the litany of 
sinfulness. He was near a truth ; and he had the heat of 
it on him. 

Satirists in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if 
they could be moved to moral distinctness, mental intention, 
with a preference of strong plain speech over the crack of 
their whips. Colney could not or would not praise our 
modern adventurous, experimental, heroic, tramping active, 
as opposed to yonder pursy passives and negatives ; he had 
occasions for flicking the fellow sharply : and to speak of the 
Lord as our friend present with us, palpable to Eeason, 
perceptible to natural piety solely through the reason, which 
justifies punishment, — that would have stopped his mouth 
upon the theme of God-forsaken creatures. Our satirist is 
an executioner by profession, a moralist in excuse, or at the 
tail of it ; though he thinks the position reversed, when he 
moralizes angrily to have his angry use of the scourge con- 
doned. Nevertheless, he fills a serviceable place ; and 
certainly he is not happy in his business. Colney suffered 
as heavily as he struck. If he had been no more than a 
mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked com- 
pensation from the acid of his phrases, for the failure to 
prick and goad, and work amendment. 

He dramatized to Nataly some of the scene going on at 
the Wells: Victor’s petition; fugue in urgency of it; 
the brief reply of Miss Dorothea and her muted echo Miss 
Virginia. He was rather their apologist for refusing. But, 


THE ladies’ LAPDOG TASSO 


229 


as when, after himself listening to their views/^ he had 
deferentially withdrawn from the ladies of Moorsedge, and 
had then beheld their strangely-hatted lieutenants and the 
regiments of the toneless respectable on the pantiles and 
I the mounts, the curse upon the satirist impelled him to 

j generalize. The quiet good ladies were multiplied : they 

I were the thousands of their sisters, petticoated or long- 
j coated or buck-skinned; comfortable annuitants under cleri- 
I cal shepherding, close upon outnumbering the labourers they 
^ paralyze at home and stultify abroad.” Colney thumped 

: away. The country’s annuitants had for type the figure 

i with the helmet of the Owl-Goddess and the trident of the 
1 Earth-shaker, seated on a wheel, at the back of penny- 
I pieces ; in whom you see neither the beauty of nakedness 
: nor the charm of drapery ; not the helmet’s dignity or the 
I trident’s power ; but she has patently that which stops the 
wheel ; and poseing for representative of an imperial nation, 
she helps to ;pass a penny.” So he passed his epigram, 
heedless of the understanding or attention of his hearer ; 

I who temporarily misjudged him for a man impelled by the 
j vanity of literary point and finish, when indeed it was hot 
j satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a class to 
1 extract a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the 
I country, mankind as well. hTataly wanted a picture painted, 

: colours and details, that she might get a vision of the scene 
; at Moorsedge. She did her best to feel an omen and sound 
i it, in his question whether the yearly increasing army of 
! the orderly annuitants and their parasites does not demon- 
; strate the proud old country as a sheath for pith rather than 
; of the vital run of sap.” Perhaps it was patriotic to inquire ; 
i! and doubtless she was the weakest of women; she could 
follow no thought; her heart was beating blindly beside 
! Victor, hopeing for the refusal painful to her through his 
! disappointment. 

You think me foolish,” she made answer to one of 
Colney’s shrugs; ^^and it has come to that pitch with me, 
that I cannot be sensible of a merit except in being one 
with him — obeying, is the word. And I have never yet 
* known him fail. That terrible Lakelands wears a different 
look to me, when I think of what he can do ; though I would 
give half my days to escape it.” 


230 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


She harped on the chord of feverish extravagance ; the 
more hateful to Colney because of his perceiving, that she 
simulated a blind devotedness to stupefy her natural pride ; 
and he was divided between stamping on her for an imbecile 
and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation ren- 
dered her pitiable. You will learn to-morrow what Victor 
has done,’’ he said, and thought how the simple words 
carried the bitterness. 

That was uttered within a few minutes of midnight, when 
the ladies of Moorsedge themselves, after an exhausting 
resistance to their dearest relative, were at the hall-door of 
the house with Victor, saying the good-night, to which he 
responded hurriedly, cordially, dumbly, a baffled man. 
They clasped hands. Miss Dorothea said: ^^You, Victor, 
always^ Miss Virginia said: ^^You will be sure of wel- 
come.” He walked out upon the moonless night; and for 
lack of any rounded object in the smothering darkness to 
look at, he could nowhere take moorings to gather himself 
together and define the man who had undergone so porten- 
tous a defeat. He was glad of quarters at an hotel, a solitary 
bed, absence from his Nataly. 

For their parts, the ladies were not less shattered. They 
had no triumph in their victory : the weight of it bore them 
down. They closed, locked, shot the bolts and fastened the 
chain of the door. They had to be reminded by the sliaking 
of their darling dog Tasso’s curly silky coat, that he had not 
taken his evening’s trot to notify malefactors of his watch- 
fulness and official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied 
one. Without consultation, they unbolted the door, and 
Tasso went forth, to compose his vesper hymn,” as Mr. 
Posterley once remarked amusingly. 

Though not pretending to the Muse’s crown so far, the 
little dog had qualities to entrance the spinster sex. His 
mistresses talked of him ; of his readiness to go forth ; of 
the audible first line of his hymn or sonnet; of his instinct 
telling him that something was wrong in the establishment. 
For most of the servants at Moorsedge were prostrated by 
a fashionable epidemic ; a slight attack, the doctor said ; but 
Montague, the butler, had withdrawn for the nursing of his 
wife ; Perrin, the footman, was confined to his chamber ; 
Manton, the favourite maid, had appeared in the morning 


THE LADIES LAPDOG TASSO 


231 


with a face that caused her banishment to bed; and the 
cook, Mrs. Bannister, then sighingly agreed to send up cold 
meat for the ladies’ dinner. Hence their melancholy in- 
hospitality to their cousin Victor, who had, in spite of his 
errors, the right to claim his place at their table, was of 
the blood,” they said. He was recognized as the living 
prince of it. His every gesture, every word, recalled the 
General. The trying scene with him had withered them, 
they did not speak of it ; each had to the other the look of 
a vessel that has come out of a gale. Would they sleep? 
They scarcely dared ask it of themselves. They had done 
rightly ; silence upon that reflection seemed best. It was 
the silence of an inward agitation; still they knew the 
power of good consciences to summon sleep. 

Tasso was usually timed for five minutes. They were 
astonished to discover by the clock, that they had given 
him ten. He was very quiet : if so, and for whatever he did, 
he had his reason, they said : he was a dog endowed with 
reason: endowed — and how they wished that Mr. Stuart 
Kem would admit it ! — with, their love of the little dog 
believed (and Mr. Posterley acquiesced), a soul. Do but 
think it of dear animals, and any form of cruelty to them 
becomes an impossibility, Mr. Stuart Eein ! But he would 
not be convinced: ungenerously indeed he named Mr. 
Posterley a courtier. The ladies could have retorted, that 
Mr. Posterley had not a brother who was the celebrated 
surgeon Sir Nicholas Bern. 

Usually Tasso came running in when the hall-door was 
opened to him. Not a sound of him could be heard. The 
ladies blew his familiar whistle. He trotted back to a third 
appeal, and was, unfortunately for them, not caressed ; he 
received reproaches from two forefingers directed straight 
at his reason. He saw it and .felt it. The hug of him was 
deferred to the tender good-night to him in his basket at 
the foot of the ladies’ beds. 

On entering their spacious bed-chamber, they were so 
fatigued that sleep appeared to their minds the compensat- 
ing logical deduction. Miss Dorothea suppressed a yawn, 
and inflicted it upon Miss Virginia, who returned it, with 
an apology, and immediately had her sister’s hand on her 
shoulder, for an attempted control of one of the irresistibles ; 


232 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


a spectacle imparting bitter shudders and shots to the sym- 
pathetic jawbones of an observer. Hand at mouth, for not 
in privacy would they have been guilty of exposing a 
grimace, they signified, under an interim smile, their 
maidenly submission to the ridiculous force of nature : after 
which, Miss Virginia retired to the dressing-room, absorbed 
in woeful recollection of the resolute No they had been 
compelled to reiterate, in response to the most eloquent and, 
saving for a single instance, admirable man, their cousin, 
the representative of ^Hhe blood,’’ supplicating them. A 
recreant thankfulness coiled within her bosom at the 
thought, that Dorothea, true to her office of speaker, had 
tasked herself with the cruel utterance and repetition of the 
word. Victor’s wonderful eyes, his voice, yet more than his 
urgent pleas ; and also, in the midst of his fiery flood of 
speech, his gentleness, his patience, pathos, and a man’s 
tone through it all, — were present to her. 

Disrobed, she knocked at the door. 

I have called to you twice,” Dorothea said ; and she 
looked a motive for the call. 

What is it ? ” said Virginia, with faltering sweetness, 
with a terrible divination. 

The movement of a sigh was made. Are you aware of 
anything, dear? ” 

Virginia was taken with the contrary movement of a sniff. 

But the fear informing it prevented it from being venture- 
some. Doubt of the pure atmosphere of their bed-chamber, 
appeared to her as too heretic even for the positive essay. 
In affirming, that she was not aware of anything, her sight 
fell on Tasso. His eyeballs were those of a little dog that 
has been awfully questioned. 

It is more than a suspicion,” said Dorothea ; and plainly 
now, while open to the seductions of any pleasing infidel 
testimony, her nose in repugnance convicted him absolutely. 

Virginia’s nose was lowered a few inches ; it inhaled and 
stopped midway. You must be mistaken, dear. He 
never . . .” 

^^But you are insensible to the ...” Dorothea’s eye- 
lids fainted. 

Virginia dismissed the forlornest of efforts at incredulity. 
A whiff of Tasso had smitten her. Ah ! ” she exclaimed 


THE ladies’ LAPDOG TASSO 


233 


and fell away. Is it Tasso ! How was it you noticed 
nothing before undressing, dear ? 

Thinking of what we have gone through to-night ! 1 

forgot him. At last the very strange . . . The like of it 1 
have not ever ! . . . And upon that thick coat ! And, dear, 
it is late. We are in the morning hours.’’ 

But, my dear — Oh, dear, what is to be done with 
him ? ” 

That was the crucial point for discussion. They had no 
servant to give them aid; Manton, they could not dream of 
disturbing. And Tasso’s character was in the estimate; he 
hated washing; it balefully depraved his temper; and not 
only, creature of habit that he was, would he decline to lie 
down anywhere save in their bedroom, he would lament, 
plead, insist unremittingly, if excluded; terrifying every 
poor invalid of the house. Then again, were they at this 
late hour to dress themselves and take him downstairs, and 
light a fire in the kitchen, and boil sufficient water to give 
him a bath and scrubbing? Cold water would be death to 
him. Besides, he would ring out his alarum for the house 
to hear, pour out all his poetry, poor dear, as Mr. Posterley 
called it, at a touch of cold water. The catastrophe was 
one to weep over, the dilemma a trial of the strongest 
intelligences. 

In addition to reviews of their solitary alternative — the 
having of a befouled, degraded little dog in their chamber 
through the night, the}^ were subjected to a conflict of 
emotions when eyeing him : and there came to them the 
painful, perhaps irreverent, perhaps uncharitable, thought: 
— that the sinner who has rolled in the abominable, must 
cleanse him and do things to polish him and perfume be- 
fore again embraced even by the mind: if indeed we can 
ever have our old sentiment for him again ! Mr. Stuart 
Bern might decide it for them. ISTay, before even the heart 
embraces him, he must completely purify himself. That is 
to say, the ordinary human sinner — save when a relative. 
Contemplating Tasso, the hearts of the ladies gushed out in 
pity of an innocent little dog, knowing not evil, dependent 
on his friends for help to be purified ; — necessarily kept at 
a distance : the very look of him prescribed extreme sepa- 
ration, as far as practicable. But they had proof of a love 


234 


ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


almost greater than it was previous to the offence, in the 
tender precautions they took to elude repulsion. 

He was rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. 
Flasks of treble-distilled lavender water, and their favourite, 
traditional in the family, eau Arquehusade, were on the 
toilet-table. They sprinkled his basket, liberally sprinkled 
the rug and the little dog. Perfume-pastilles were in one 
of the sitting-rooms below; and Virginia would have gone 
down softly to fetch a box, but Dorothea restrained her, in 
pity for the servants, with the remark : It would give us 
a nightmare of a Poman Catholic Cathedral!’’ A bit of 
the window was lifted by Dorothea, cautiously, that prowl- 
ing outsiders might not be attracted. Tasso was wooed to 
his basket. He seemed inquisitive ; the antidote of his 
naughtiness excited him ; his tail circled after his muzzle 
several times ; then he lay. A silken scarf steeped in eau 
d A t quehusade was flung across him. 

Their customary devout observances concluded, lights 
were extinguished, and the ladies kissed, and entered their 
beds. 

Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought 
that Virginia was long in settling herself. Virginia did 
not like the sound of Dorothea’s double sigh. Both listened 
anxiously for the doings of Tasso. He rested. 

He was uneasy ; he was rounding his basket once more ; 
unaware of the exaggeration of his iniquitous conduct, poor 
innocent, he shook that dreadful coat of his ! He had dis- 
placed the prophylactic cover of the scarf. 

He drove them in a despair to speculate on the contention 
between the perfume and the stench in junction, with such 
a doubt of the victory of which of the two, as drags us to 
fear our worst. It steals into our nostrils, possesses them. 
As the History of Mankind has informed us, we were led 
up to our civilization by the nose. But Philosophy warns 
us on that eminence, to beware of trusting exclusively to 
our conductor, lest the mind of us at least be plunged back 
into barbarism. The ladies hated both the cause and the 
consequence, they had a revulsion from the object, of the 
above contention. But call it not a contention : there is 
nobility in that. This was a compromise, a degrading union, 
with very sickening results. Whether they came of an 


THE ladies’ LAPDOG TASSO 236 

excess of the sprinkling, could not well be guessed. The 
drenching at least was righteously intended. 

Beneath their shut eyelids, they felt more and more the 
oppression of a darkness not laden with slumber. They 
saw it in solidity; themselves as restless billows, driven 
dashing to the despondent sigh. Sleep was denied them. 

Tasso slept. He had sinned unknowingly, and that is 
not a spiritual sin; the chastisement confers the pardon. 

But why was this ineffable blessing denied to them? 
Was it that they might have a survey of all the day^s 
deeds and examine them under the cruel black beams of 
Insomnia ? 

Virginia said: “You are wakeful.” 

“Thoughtful,” was the answer. 

A century of the midnight rolled on. 

Dorothea said: “He behaved very beautifully.” 

“I looked at the GeneraPs portrait while he besought 
us,” Virginia replied. 

“One sees him in Victor, at Victor’s age. Try to sleep.” 

“I do. I pray that you may.” 

Silence courted slumber. Their interchange of speech 
from the posture of bodies on their backs, had been low 
and deliberate, in the tone of the vaults. Dead silence 
recalled the strangeness of it. The night was breathless; 
their open window a peril bestowing no boon. They were 
mutually haunted by sound of the gloomy query at the nos- 
trils of each when drawing the vital breath. But for that, 
they thought they might have slept. 

Bed spake to bed : 

“ The words of Mr. Stuart Kem last Sunday ! ” 

“ He said : ‘ Be just. ’ Could one but see direction ! ” 

“In obscurity, feeling is a guide.” 

“ The heart.” 

“ It may sometimes be followed.” 

“When it concerns the family.” 

“ He would have the living, who are seeking peace, be 
just.” 

“Not to assume the seat of justice.” 

Again they lay as tombstone effigies, that have com- 
mitted the passage of affairs to another procession of the 
Ages. 


236 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


There was a gentle sniff, in hopeless confirmation of the 
experience of its predecessors. A sister to it ensued. 

“Could Victor have spoken so, without assurance in his 
conscience, that his entreaty was righteously addressed to 
us ? that we . . 

“ And no others ! 

“I think of his language. He loves the child.” 

“In heart as in mind, he is eminently gifted; acknowl- 
edgeing error.” 

“He was very young.” 

The huge funereal minutes conducted their sonorous 
hearse, the hour. 

It struck in the bedroom Three. 

No more than three of the clock, it was the voice telling 
of half the precious restorative night hours wasted. 

Now, as we close our eyelids when we would go to sleep, 
so must we, in expectation of the peace of mind granting 
us the sweet oblivion, preliminarily do something which 
invokes, that we may obtain it. 

“Dear,” Dorothea said. 

“I know indeed,” said Virginia. 

“We may have iDeen ! ” 

“Not designingly.” 

“Indeed not. But harsh it maybe named, if the one 
innocent is to be the sufferer.” 

“The child can in no sense be adjudged guilty.” 

“It is Victor’s child.” 

“He adores the child.” 

Wheels were in mute motion within them ; and presently 
the remark was tossed-up : 

“In his coming to us, it is possible to see paternal 
solicitude.” 

Thence came fruit of reflection : 

“To be instrumental as guides to a tender young life! ” 

Keflection heated with visions : 

“ Once our dream ! ” 

They had the happier feeling of composure, though 
Tasso possessed the room. Not Tasso, but a sublimated 
offensiveness, issue of the antagonistically combined, 
dispersed to be the more, penetrating; insomuch that it 
seemed to them they could not ever again make use of 


' THE LADIES^ LAPDOG TASSO 237 

j; eau d? Arqiiehiisade without the vitiating reminder. So true 
, were the words of Mr. Stuart Eem: ‘^Half measures to 
I purification are the most delusive of our artifices.” Fatigue 
I and its reflections helped to be peacefuller. Their souls 
i were mounting to a serenity above the nauseating degrada- 
! tion, to which the poor little dog had dragged them. 

I “Victor gave his promise.” 

“At least, concession would not imply contact with the 
guilty.” 

Both sighed as they took-up the burden of the vaporous 
Tasso to drop him; with the greater satisfaction in the 
' expelling of their breath. 

I “It might be said, dear, that concession to his entreaty 
i does not in any way countenance the sin.” 

4 “I can see, dear, how it might be read as a reproof.” 
j Their exchange of sentences followed meditative pauses ; 
j Dorothea leading, 
j “To one so sensitive as Victor ! ” 

I “ A month or two of our society for the child ! ” 

1 “ It is not the length of time.” 

“The limitation assures against maternal claims.” 

“She would not dare.” 

‘‘He uses the words: ‘her serious respect^ for us. I 
should not wish to listen to him often.” 

“We listen to a higher.” 

“It may really be, that the child is like him.” 

“Hot resembling Mr. Stuart Eem^s Clementina!” 

“ A week of that child gave us our totally sleepless night.” 
“One thinks more hopefully of a child of Victor’s.” 

“He would preponderate.” 

“He would.” 

They sighed; but it was now with the relief of a light- 
ened oppression. 

“If, dear, in truth the father’s look is in the child, he 
has the greater reason to desire for her a taste of our 
atmosphere.” 

“ Do not pursue it. Sleep.” 

“ One prayer I ” 

“Your mention of our atmosphere, dear, destroys my 
power to frame one. Do you, for two. But I would 
cleanse my heart.” 


238 


ONE OF OtJB CONQUERORS 


“There is none purer/’ 

“Hush.” 

Virginia spoke a more fervent word of praise of her 
sister, and had not the hushing response to it. She heard 
the soft regular breathing. Her own was in downy fellow- 
ship with it a moment later. 

At the hour of nine, in genial daylight, sitting over the 
crumbs of his hotel breakfast, Victor received a little note 
that bore the handwriting of Dorothea Duvidney. 

“ Dear Victor, we are prepared to receive the child for a 
month. In haste, before your train. Our love. D. and V.” 

His face flashed out of cloud. 

A more precious document had never been handed to 
him. It chased back to midnight the doubt hovering over 
his belief in himself j — phrased to say, that he was no 
longer the Victor Eadnor known to the world. And it 
extinguished a corpse-light recollection of a baleful dream 
in the night. Here shone radiant witness of his being the 
very man; save for the spot of his recent confusion in 
distinguishing his identity or in feeling that he stood 
whole and solid. — Because of two mature maiden ladies ? 
Yes, because of two maiden ladies, my good fellow. And 
friend Colney, you know the ladies, and what the getting 
round them for one’s purposes really means. 

The sprite of Colney Durance had struck him smartly 
overnight. Victor’s internal crow was over Colney now. 
And when you have the optimist and pessimist acutely 
opposed in a mixing group, they direct lively conversations 
at one another across the gulf of distance, even of time. 
For a principle is involved, besides the knowledge of the 
other’s triumph or dismay. The couple are scales of a 
balance; and not before last night had Victor ever con- 
sented to think of Colney ascending while he dropped low 
to graze the pebbles. 

He left his hotel for the station, singing the great aria 
of the fourth Act of the Favorita : neglected since that 
mighty German with his Bienzi^ and Tannhduser^ and 
Tristan and Isolda, had mastered him, to the displacement 
of his boyhood’s beloved sugary -inis and -antes and -zettisj 


NESTA^S ENGAGEMENT 


^39 


had clearly mastered, not beguiled, him; had wafted him 
up to a new realm, invigorating if severer. But now his 
youth would have its voice. He travelled up to town with 
Sir Abraham Quatley, and talked, and took and gave hints 
upon City and Commercial affairs, while the honeyed 
Italian of the conventional, gloriously animal, stress and 
flatter had a revel in his veins, now and then mutedly 
ebullient at the mouth: honeyed, golden, rich in visions; 
— having surely much more of Nature’s encouragement to 
her children ? 


CHAPTER XXIV 

NESTA^S ENGAGEMENT 

A WORD in his ear from Eenellan, touching that man 
Blathenoy, set the wheels of Victor^s brain at work upon 
his defences, for a minute, on the walk Westward. Who 
knew? — who did not know! He had a torpid conscious- 
ness that he cringed to the world, with an entreaty to the 
great monster to hold off in ignorance; and the next in- 
stant, he had caught its miserable spies by the lurcher 
neck and was towering. He dwelt on his contempt of 
them, to curtain the power they could stir. 

The little woman, you say, took to Dartrey ? ” 

Eenellan, with the usual apologetic moderation of a 
second statement, thought ‘‘there was the look of it.’’ 

“Well, we must watch over lier. Dartrey! — but Dar- 
trey ’s an honest fellow with women. But men are men. 
Very few men spare a woman when the mad fit is on her. 
A little woman — pretty little woman! — wife to Jacob 
Blathenoy ! She must n’t at her age have any close choos- 
ing — under her hand. And Dartrey ’s just the figure to 
strike a spark in a tinder-box head.” 

“ With a husband who ’d reduce Minerva’s to tinder, after 
a month of him ! ” 

“He spent his honeymoon at his place at Wrensham; 
told me so.” Blathenoy had therefore then heard of the 
building of Lakelands by the Victor Radnor of the City; 


240 ONE OF OUE. CONQUEKORS 

and had then, we guess — in the usual honeymoon boasting 
of a windbag with his bride — wheezed the foul gossip, to 
hide his emptiness and do duty for amusement of the pretty 
little caged bird. Probably so. But Victor knew that 
Blathenoy needed him and feared him. Probably the wife 
had been enjoined to keep silence; for the Blachingtons, 
Fannings and others were, it could be sworn, blank and 
unscratched folio sheets on the subject: — as yet; unless 
Mrs. Bur man had dropped venom. 

‘‘One pities the little woman, eh, Fenellan?’’ 

“Dartrey won’t be back for a week or so; and they ’re off 
to Switzerland, after the dinner they give. I heard from 
him this morning; one of the Clanconans is ill.” 

“Lucky. But wherever Blathenoy takes her, he must 
be the same ‘ arid bore,’ as old Colney says.” 

“A domestic simoom,” said Fenellan, booming it: and 
Victor had a shudder. 

“Awful thing,- marriage, to some women! We chain 
them to that domestic round; most of them have n’t the 
means of independence or a chance of winning it; and all 
that ’s open to them, if they ’ve made a bad cast for a mate 
— and good Lord ! how are they to know before it ’s too 
late ! — they have n’t a choice except to play tricks or 
jump to the deuce or sit and ‘ drape in blight,’ as Colney 
has it; though his notion of the optional marriages, 
broken or renewed every seven years! — if he means it. 
iYou never know, with him. It sounds like another squirt 
of savage irony. It ’s donkey nonsense, eh ? ” 

“The very hee-haw of nonsense,” Fenellan acquiesced. 

“Come, come; read your Scriptures; donkeys have 
shown wisdom,” Victor said, rather leaning to the theme 
of a fretfulness of women in the legal yoke. “They’re 
donkeys till we know them for prophets. Who can tell ! 
Colney may be hailed for one fifty years hence.” 

Fenellan was not invited to enter the house, although 
the loneliness of his lodgeings was known, and also, that 
he played whist at his Club. Victor had grounds for turn- 
ing to him at the door and squeezing his hand warmly, by 
way of dismissal. In ascribing them to a weariness at 
Fenellan’s perpetual acquiescence, he put the cover on 
them, and he stamped it with a repudiation of tlie charge, 


nesta’s engagement 


241 


that Colney’s views upon the great Marriage Question 
were the ‘‘very hee-haw of nonsense.” They were not the 
hee-haw ; in fact, viewing the host of marriages, they were 
for discussion ; there was no bray about them. He could 
not feel them to be absurd while Mrs. Burman^s tenure of 
existence barred the ceremony. Anything for a phrase ! he 
murmured of Fenellan’s talk; calling him. Dear old boy, 
to soften the slight. 

Nataly had not seen Fenellan or heard from Dartrey; 
so she continued to be uninformed of her heroes release; 
and that was in the order of happy accidents. She had 
hardly to look her interrogation for the news; it radiated. 
But he stated such matter-of-course briefly. “The good 
ladies are ready to receive our girl.” 

Her chagrin resolved to a kind of solace of her draggled 
pride, in the idea, that he who tamed everybody to submis- 
sion, might well have command of her. 

The note, signed D. and V., was shown. 

There stood the words. And last night she had been 
partly of the opinion of Colney Durance. She sank down 
among the unreasoning abject; — not this time with her 
perfect love of him, but with a resistance and a dubiety 
under compression. For she had not quite comprehended 
why Nesta should go. This readiness of the Duvidney 
ladies to receive the girl, stopped her mental inquiries. 

She begged for a week’s delay; “before the parting,” as 
her dear old silly mother’s pathos whimpered it, of the 
separation for a month ! and he smiled and hummed pleas- 
antly at any small petition, thinking her in error to expect 
Dartrey ’s return to town before the close of a week; and 
then wondering at women, mildly denouncing in his heart 
the mothers who ran risk of disturbing their daughters’ 
bosoms with regard to particular heroes married or not. 
Dartrey attracted women: he was one of the men who do it 
without effort. Victor’s provident mind blamed the mother 
for the indiscreetness of her wish to have him among them. 
But Dudley had been making way bravely of late; he 
improved; he began to bloom, like a Spring flower of the 
garden protected from frosts under glass; and Fred i was 
the sheltering and nourishing bestower of the lessons. 
One could see, his questions and other little points re- 

16 


242 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


vealed, that he had a certain lover’s dread of Dartrey 
Fenellan; a sort of jealousy: Victor understood the feeling. 
To love a girl, who has her ideal of a man elsewhere in 
another, though she may know she never can wed the man, 
and has not the hope of it, is torment to the lover quail- 
ing, as we do in this terrible season of the priceless deli- 
ciousness, stripped against all the winds that blow; skin- 
less at times. One gets up a sympathy for the poor shy 
dependent shivering lover. Nevertheless, here was young 
Dudley waking, visibly becoming bolder. As in the flute- ^ 
duets, he gained fire from concert. The distance between 
Cronidge and Moorsedge was two miles and a quarter. 

Instead of the delay of a whole week, Victor granted four 
days, which embraced a musical evening at Mrs. John 
Cormyn’s on the last of the days, when Nesta was engaged 
to sing with her mother a duet of her own composition, 
the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from 
rigid Herr Strauscher, who had said what he had said, in 
letting it pass: eulogy, coming from him. So Victor 
heard, and he doated on the surprise to come for him, in a 
boyish anticipation. The girl’s little French ballads under 
tutelage of Louise de Seilles promised, though they were 
imitative. If Strauscher let this pass . . . Victor saw 
Grand Opera somewhere to follow; England’s claim to be a 
creative musical nation vindicated : and the genius of the 
fair sex as well. 

He heard the duet at Mrs. Cormyn’s; and he imagined 
a hearing of his Fredi’s Opera, and her godmother’s delight 
in it; the once-famed Sanfredini’s consent to be the diva 
at a rehearsal, and then her compelling her hidalgo diiqiie 
to consent further : an event not inconceivable. For here 
was downright genius; the flowering aloe of the many 
years in formation; and Colney admitted the song to 
have a streak of genius; though he would pettishly and 
stupidly say, that our modern newspaper Press is able now . 
to force genius for us twenty or so to the month, excluding 
Sundays — our short pauses for the incubation of it. Peal 
rare genius was in that song, nothing forced; and exquisite 
melody; one of those melodies which fling gold chains j 
about us and lead us off, lead us back into Eden. Victor J 
hummed at bars of it on the drive homeward. His darlings | 


NESTA^S ENGAGEMENT 243 

had to sing it again in the half-lighted drawing-room. 
The bubble-happiness of the three was vexed only by tid- 
ings heard from Colney during the evening of a renewed 
instance of Skepsey’s misconduct. Priscilla Graves had 
hurried away to him at the close of Mr. John Cormyn’s 
Concert, in consequence ; in grief and in sympathy. Skep- 
sey was to appear before the magistrate next morning, for 
having administered physical chastisement to his. wife 
during one of her fits of drunkenness. Colney had seen 
him. His version of the story was given, however, in the 
objectionable humorous manner: none could gather from it 
of what might be pleaded for Skepsey. His “lesson to 
his wife in the art of pugilism, before granting her Cap- 
tain’s rank among the Defensive Amazons of Old Eng- 
land,’’ was the customary patent absurdity. But it was 
odd, that Skepsey always preferred his appeal for help 
to Colney Durance. Nesta proposed following Priscilla 
that night. She had hinted her wish, on the way home; 
she was urgent, beseeching, when her father lifted praises 
of her: she had to start with her father by the train at 
seven in the morning, and she could not hear of poor 
Skepsey for a number of hours. She begged a day’s delay ; 
which would enable her, she said, to join them in dining 
at the Blachington’s, and seeing dear Lakelands again. 
“I was invited, you know.” She spoke in childish style, 
and under her eyes she beheld her father and mother ex- 
change looks. He had a fear that Nataly might support 
the girl’s petition. Nataly read him to mean, possible 
dangers among the people at Wrensham. She had seemed 
hesitating. After meeting Victor’s look, her refusal was 
firm. She tried to make it one of distress for the use of 
the hard word to her own dear girl. Nesta spied beneath. 

But what was it ? There was a reason for her going ! 
She had a right to stay, and see and talk with Captain 
Dartrey, and she was to be deported ! 

So now she set herself to remember little incidents at 
Creckholt: particularly a conversation in a very young 
girl’s hearing, upon Sir Humphrey and Lady Pottil’s 
behaviour to the speakers, her parents. She had then, and 
she now had, an extraordinary feeling, as from a wind 
striking upon soft summer weather off regions of ice, that 


244 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


she was in her parents’ way. How ? The feeling was 
irrational; it could ^ give her no reply, or only the multi- 
tudinous which are the question violently repeated. She 
slept on it. 

She and her father breakfasted by the London birds’ , 
first twitter. They talked of Skepsey. She spoke of her . 
going as exile. ‘‘No,” said he, “you’re sure to meet 
friends.” 

Her cheeks glowed. It came wholly through the sud- ^ 
denness of the recollection, that the family-seat of one 
among the friends was near the Wells. 

He was allowed to fancy, as it suited him to fancy, that 
a vivid secret pleasure laid the colour on those ingenuous 
fair cheeks. ^ 

“A solitary flute for me, for a mdnth ! I shall miss my ' 
sober comrade : got the habit of duetting: and he ’s gentle, j 
bears with me.” 

Tears lined her eyelids. “ Who would not be, dearest j 
dada ! But there is nothing to bear except the honour.” s 

“ You like him ? You and I always have the same tastes, 
Fredi.” 

Now there was a reddening of the sun at the mount ; all 
the sky aflame. How could he know that it was not the 
heart in the face ! She reddened because she had perused 
his wishes ; had detected a scheme striking off from them, 
and knew a man to be the object of it ; and because she had 
at the same time the sense of a flattery in her quick divina- 
tion ; and she was responsively emotional, her blood virginal ; 
often it was a tropical lightning. 

It looked like the heart doing rich painter’s work on 
maiden features. Victor was naturally as deceived as he 
wished to be. i 

From his being naturally so, his remarks on Dudley had 
an air of embracing him as one of the family. “ His manner 
to me just hits me.” 

I like to see him with you,” she said. 

Her father let his tongue run : “ One of the few young 
men I feel perfectly at home with ! I do like dealing with 
a gentleman. I can confide in a gentleman : honour, heart, . 
whatever I hold dearest.” 

There he stopped, not too soon. The girl was mute, fully 


nesta’s engagement 


245 


agreeing, slightly haridening. She had a painful sense of 
separation from her dear Louise. And it was now to be 
from her mother as well : she felt the pain when kissing her 
mother in bed. But this was moderated by the prospect of 
a holiday away out of reach of Mr. Barmby’s pursuing voice, 
whom her mother favoured : and her mother was concealing 
something from her ; so she could not make the confidante 
of her mother. Nataly had no forewarnings. Her simple 
regrets filled her bosom. All night she had been taking her 
chastisement, and in the morning it seemed good to her, that 
she should be denuded, for her girl to learn the felicity of 
having relatives. 

For some reason, over which Nataly mused in the suc- 
ceeding hours, the girl had not spoken of any visit her 
mother was to pay to the Diividney ladies or they to her. 
Latterly she had not alluded to her mother’s family. It 
might mean, that the beloved and dreaded was laying finger 
on a dark thing in the dark ; reading syllables by touch ; 
keeping silence over the communications to a mind not yet 
actively speculative, as it is a way with young women. 

With young women educated for the market, to be timorous, 
consequently secretive, rather snaky,” Colney Durance had 
said. Her Nesta was not one of the ^Hramed and glazed” 
description, cited by him, for an example of the triumph of 
the product; ‘^exactly harmonious with the ninny male’s 
ideal of female innocence.” No; but what if the mother 
had opened her heart to her girl ? It had been of late her 
wish or a dream, shaping hourly to a design, now positively 
to go through that furnace. Her knowledge of Victor’s 
objection, restrained an impulse that had not won spring 
enough to act against his counsel or vivify an intelligence 
grown dull in slavery under him, with regard to the one 
seeming right course. The adoption of it would have 
wounded him — therefore her. She had thought of him 
first ; she had also thought of herself, and she blamed herself 
now. She went so far as to think, that Victor was guilty of 
the schemer’s error of counting human creatures arithmeti- 
cally, in the sum, without the estimate of distinctive qualities 
and value here and there. His return to a shivering sensi- 
tiveness on the subject of his girl’s enlightenment ‘^just 
yet,” for which Nataly pitied and loved him, sharing it, with 


246 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


humiliation for doing so, became finally her excuse. We 
must have some excuse, if we would keep to life. 

Skepsey’s case appeared in the evening papers. He con- 
fessed frankly,’^ he said, to the magistrate, that, ^‘acting 
under temporary exasperation, he had lost for a moment a 
man’s proper self-command.” He was as frank in stating, 
that he occupied the prisoner’s place before his Worship a 
second time, and was a second time indebted to the gentle- 
man, Mr. Colney Durance, wlio so kindly stood by him.” 
There was hilarity in the Court at his quaint sententious 
envelopment of the idiom of the streets, which he delivered 
with solemnity : He could only plead, not in absolute 
justification — an appeal to human sentiments — the feel- 
ings of a man of the humbler orders, returning home in the 
evening, and his thoughts upon things not without their 
importance, to find repeatedly the guardian of his household 
beastly drunk, and destructive.” Colney made the case quite 
intelligible to the magistrate ; who gravely robed -a strain of 
the idiomatic in the officially awful, to keep in tune with 
his delinquent. No serious harm had been done to the 
woman. Skepsey was admonished and released. His wife 
expressed her willingness to forgive him, now he had got 
his lesson ; and she hoped he would understand, that there 
was no need for a woman to learn pugilism. Skepsey would 
have explained ; but the case was over, he was hustled out. 

However, a keen young reporter present smelt fun for 
copy ; he followed the couple; and in a particular evening 
Journal, laughable matter was printed concerning Skepsey ’s 
view of the pugilism to be imparted to women for their 
physical protection in extremity, and the distinction of it 
from the blow conveying the moral lesson to them ; his wife 
having objected to the former, because it annoyed her and 
he pestered her ; and she was never, she said, ready to stand 
up to him for practice, as he called it, except when she had 
taken more than he thought wliolesome for her: — he had 
no sense. There was a squabble between them, because he 
chose to scour away to his master’s office instead of conduct- 
ing her home with the honours. Nesta read the young 
reporter’s version, with shrieks. She led the ladies of 
Moorsedge to discover amusement in it. 

At first, as her letter to her mother described them, they 


testa’s engagement 


247 


were like a pair of pieces of costly China, with the settled 
smile, and cold. She saw but the outside of them, and she 
continued reporting the variations, which steadily deter- 
mined to warmth. On the night of the third day, they 
kissed her tenderly ; they were human ligures. 

one could be aware of the trial undergone by the good 
ladies in receiving her : Victor’s child ; but, as their phrase 
would have run, had they dared to give it utterance to one 
another, a child of sin. How foreign to them, in that 
character, how strange, when she was looked on as an 
inhabitant of their house, they hardly dared to estimate ; 
until the timorous estimation, from gradually swelling, 
suddenly sank; nature invaded them; they could discard 
the alienating sense of the taint ; and not only did they no 
longer fear the moment when Mr. Stuart Eein or Mr. 
Posterley might call for evening tea, but they consulted 
upon inviting the married one of those gentlemen, to divert 
dear Nesta.” Every night she slept well. In all she did, 
she proved she was ^‘of the blood.” She had Victor’s 
animated eyes ; she might have, they dreaded to think, his 
eloquence. They put it down to his eloquence entirely, 
that their resistance to his petition had been overcome, for 
similarly with the treatment of the private acts of royal 
personages by lacquey History, there is, in the minds of the 
ultra-civilized, an insistance, that any event having a con- 
sequence in matters personal to them, be at all hazards 
recorded with the utmost nicety in decency. By such means, 
they preserve the ceremonial self-respect, which is a necessity 
of their existence ; and so they maintain the regal elevation 
over the awe-struck subjects of their interiors ; who might 
otherwise revolt, pull down, scatter, dishonour, expose for a 
shallow fiction the holiest, the most vital to them. A dem- 
ocratic evil spirit is abroad, generated among congregations, 
often perilously communicating its wanton laughter to the 
desperate wickedness they know (not solely through the 
monition of Mr. Stuart Bern) to lurk within. It has to be 
excluded : on certain points they must not think. The night 
of Tasso was darkly clouded in the minds of the pure ladies : 
a rift would have seized their half-slumbering sense of smell, 
to revive the night, perhaps disorder the stately march of 
their intelligences. 


248 


ONE OF OUE CONQUERORS 


Victor’s eloquence, Victor’s influence, Victor’s child : he 
carried them as a floodstream, insomuch that their reception 
of this young creature of the blot on her birth, was regarded 
by them in the unmentioned abstract, and the child’s 
presence upon earth seen with the indulgence (without the 
naughty curiosity) of the loyal moral English for the nu- 
merous offspring of the peccadillos of their monarchs. 
These things pass muster from being ‘‘Britannically co- 
cooned in the purple,” says our irreverent satirist; and the 
maiden ladies’ passion of devotion to the blood ” helped to 
blind them ; but still more so did the imperious urgency to 
curtain closely the night of Tasso, throwing all its conse- 
quences upon Victor’s masterful tongue. Whence it ensued 
(and here is the danger for illogical individuals as well as vast 
communities, who continue to batten upon fiction when the 
convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that they 
had -need to exalt his eloquence, for a cloak to their conduct; 
and doing it, they fell into a habit of yielding to him ; they 
disintegrated under him ; rules, principles, morality, were 
shaken to some confusion. And still proceeding thus, they 
now and then glanced back, more wonderingly than con- 
victed sinners upon their days of early innocence, at the 
night when successfully they withstood him. They who 
had doubted of the rightness of letting Victor’s girl come 
into collision with two clerical gentlemen, one of whom 
was married, permitted him now to bring the Hon. Dudley 
Sowerby to their house, and make appointments to meet Mr. 
Dudley Sowerby under a roof that sheltered a young lady, 
evidently the allurement to the scion of aristocracy ; of 
whose family Mr. Stuart E-em had spoken in the very kind- 
ling hushed tones, proper to the union of a sacerdotal and 
an English citizen’s veneration. 

How would it end ? And if some day this excellent Mr. 
Dudley Sowerby reproached them! He could not have a 
sweeter bride, one more truly a lady in education and 
manners ; but the birth ! the child’s name ! Their trouble 
was emitted in a vapour of interjections. Very perplexing 
was it for the good ladies of strict principles to reflect, as 
dimly they did, that the concrete presence of dear Nesta 
silenced and overcame objections to her being upon earth. 
She seemed, as it were, a draught of redoubtable Nature 


nesta’s engagement 


249 


inebriating morality. But would others be similarly af- 
fected? Victor might get his release, to do justice to the 
mother : it would not cover the child. Prize as they might 
the quality of the Eadnor blood (drawn from the most 
ancient of original Britain’s princes), there was also the 
Cantor blood for consideration ; and it was old, noble, proud. 
Would it be satisfied in matching itself with great wealth, 
a radiant health, and the good looks of a young flower? 
For the sake of the dear girl, the ladies hoped that it would; 
and they enlarged the outline of their wedding present, 
while, in their minds, the noble English family which could 
be satisfied so, was lowered, partaking of the taint* they had 
personally ceased to recognize. 

Of one thing they were sure, and it enlisted them : the 
gentleman loved the girl. Her love of him, had it been 
prominent to view, would have stirred a feminine sigh, not 
more, except a feminine lecture to follow. She was quite 
uninflamed, fresh and cool as a spring. His ardour had no 
disguise. They measured him by the favourite fiction’s 
heroes of their youth, and found him to gaze, talk, comport 
himself, according to the prescription; correct grammar, 
finished sentences, all that is expected of a gentleman 
enamoured ; and ever with the watchful intentness for his 
lady’s faintest first dawn of an inclining to a wish. Mr. 
Dudley Sowerby’s eye upon ]N'esta was really an apprentice. 
There is in Love’s young season a magnanimity in the 
male kind. Their superior strength and knowledge are 
made subservient to the distaff of the weaker and shallower: 
they crown her queen ; her look is their mandate. So was 
it when Sir Charles and Sir Eupert and the estimable 
Villiers Davenant touched maidenly hearts to throb: so is 
it now, with the Hon. Dudley Sowerby. 

Very haltingly, the ladies were guilty of a suggestion to 
Victor. Oh ! Fredi ? ” said he ; admires her, no doubt ; 
and so do I, so we all do; she ’s one of the nice girls ; but 
as to Cupid’s darts, she belongs to the cucumber family, and 
he shoots without fireing. We shall do the mischief if we 
put an interdict. Don’t you remember the green days when 
obstacles were the friction to light that match ? ” Their 
pretty nod of assent displayed the virgin pride of the 
remembrance: they dreamed of having once been exceed- 


250 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


ingly wilful ; it refreshed their nipped natures; and dwell- 
ing on it, they forgot to press their suggestion. Incidentally, 
he named the sum his Fredi would convey to her husband; 
with, as was calculable, the further amount his only child 
would inherit. A curious effect was produced on them. 
Though they were not imaginatively mercenary, as the 
creatures tainted with wealth commonly are, they talked 
of the sum over and over in the solitude of their chamber. 

Dukes have married for less.’’ Such an heiress, they said, 
might buy up a Principality. Victor had supplied them 
with something of an apology to the gentleman proposing 
to Nesta in their house. 

The chronicle of it is, that Dudley Sowerby did this on 
the fifteenth day of September ; and that it was not known to 
the damsel’s parents before the twenty-third ; as they were 
away on an excursion in South Tyrol : — away, flown, with 
just a word of the hurried departure to their envious, exiled 
girl ; though they did not tell her of new constructions at 
the London house partly causing them to fly. Subject to 
their consent, she wrote, she had given hers. The letter 
was telegramic on the essential point. She wrote of Mr. 
Barmby’s having visited Mr. Posterley at the Wells, and she 
put it just as flatly. Her principal concern, to judge by her 
writing, was, to know what Mr. Durance had doim, during 
her absence, with the group of emissary-advocates of the vari- 
ous tongues of Europe on board the steam-Liner conducting 
them the first stage of their journey to the Court of Japan. 

Mr. Simeon Fenellan had written his opinion, that all 
these delegates of the different European nationalities 
were nothing other than dupes of a New York Syndicate 
of American Humourists, not without an eye on the main- 
chance ; and he was sure they would be set to debate 
publicly, before an audience of high-priced tickets, in the 
principal North American Cities, previous to the embarca- 
tion for Japan at San Francisco. Mr. Fenellan eulogized 
the immense astuteness of Dr. Gannius in taking his 
daughter Delphica 'Cvith him. Dr. Gannius had singled 
forth poor Dr. Bouthoin for the object of his attacks ; but 
Nesta was chiefly anxious to hear of Delphica’s proceedings ; 
she was immensely interested in Delphica, and envied her ; 
and the girl’s funny speculations over the play of Delphica’s 


NESTA'S ENGAGEMENT 


251 


divers arts upon the Greek, and upon the Eussian, and upon 
i the English curate Mr. Semhians, and upon M. Falarique — 
! set Gallically pluming and crowing out of an Alsace-Lorraine 
growl — were clever. Only, in such a letter, they were 
amazing. 

Nataly received it at Campiglio, when about to start for 
an excursion down the Sarca Valley to Arco. Her letter of 
reply was delayed. One to Victor from Dudley Sowerby, 
awaited them, on their return. Confirms Fredi,’’ he said, 
showing it, and praising it as commendable, properly fervid. 
She made pretence to read, she saw the words. 

^Her short beat of wings was over. She had joined her- 
self with Victor’s leap for a change, thirsting for the 
scenery of the white peaks in heaven, to enjoy through his 
enjoyment, if her own capacity was dead: and she had 
found it revive, up to some recovery of her old songful 
readiness for invocations of pleasure. Escape and beauty 
beckoned ahead ; behind were the chains. These two 
letters of the one fact plucked her back. The chained 
body bore the fluttering spirit : or it was the spirit in bonds, 
that dragged the body. Both were abashed before the 
image of her girl. Out of the riddle of her strange Nesta, 
one thing was clear : she did not love the man : and Nataly 
tasted gladness in that, from the cup of poisonous regrets 
at the thought. Her girl’s heart would not be broken. 
But if he so strongly loved her, as to hold to this engage- 
ment ? . . . It might then be worse. She dropped a plumb- 
: line into the young man, sounding him by what she knew of 
him and judged. She had to revert to Nesta’s charm, for 
the assurance of his anchored attachment. 

Her holiday took the burden of her trouble, and amid the 
beauty of a disenchanted scene, she resumed the London 
incubus. 

You told him of her being at the Wells ? in the 
neighbourhood, Victor ? ’’ 

“ Did n’t you know, my dear, the family-seat is Cronidge, 
two miles out from the Wells ? — and particularly pretty 
country.” 

I had forgotten, if I ever heard. You will not let him 
be in ignorance ? ” 

My dear love, you are pale about it. This is a matter 


252 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


between men. I write, thanking for the honour and so 
forth ; and I appoint an interview ; and I show him my 
tablets. He must be told, necessarily. Incidents of this 
kind come in their turn. If Dudley does not account him- 
self the luckiest young fellow in the kingdom, he ’s not 
worthy of his good fortune. I wish they were both here 
now, honeymooning among these peaks, seeing the crescent 
over one, as we did last night ! 

Have you an idea, in reading Nesta’s letter ? ’’ 

Seems indifferent ? — mere trick to hide the blushes. 
And I, too, I ’m interested in Delphica. Delphica and 
Falarique will be fine stage business. Of course. Dr. 
Bouthoin and his curate ! — we know what Old England 
has to expect from Colney.’^ 

At any rate, Mr. Durance hurts no one. You will, in 
your letter, appoint the day of the interview ? 

Hurts himself! Yes, dearest; appoint for — ten days 
homeward — eleventh day from to-day. And you to Fredi : 
a bit of description — as you can, my Nataly ! Happy to 
be a dolomite, to be painted by Nataly’s pen.” 

The sign is evil, when we have a vexatious ringing in 
the ear of some small piece of familiar domestic chatter, 
and subject it to scrutiny, hang on it, worry and magnify 
it. What will not creatures under sway of the sensational 
life, catch at to emphasize and strengthen distaste, until 
distaste shall have a semblance of reason, in the period of 
the mind’s awakening to revolt ! Nataly shrank from the 
name of dolomite, detested the name, though the scenes 
regained their beauty or something of it beneath her show- 
ery vision. Every time Victor spoke of dolomites on the 
journey homeward, she had at heart an accusation of her 
cowardice, her duplicity, frailty, treachery to the highest of 
her worship and sole support of her endurance in the world : 
not much blaming him : but the degrading view of herself 
sank them both. On a shifty soil, down goes the idol. For 
him she could plead still, for herself she could not. 

The smell of the Channel brine inspirited her sufficiently 
to cast off the fit and make it seem, in the main, a bodily 
depression ; owing to causes, of which she was beginning to 
have an apprehensive knowledge : and they were not so 
fearful to her as the gloom they displaced. 


3<fATALY IN ACTION 


253 


CHAPTEE XXV 

NATALY IN ACTION 

A TUCKET of herald newspaiiers told the world of Victor’s 
returning to his London. Pretty Mrs. Blathenoy was 
Xataly’s first afternoon visitor, and was graciously received ; 
no sign of inquiry for the cause of the lady’s alacrity to 
greet her being shown. Colney Durance came in, bringing 
the rumour of an Australian cantatrice to kindle Europe ; 
Mr. Peridon, a seeker of tidings from the city of Bourges ; 
Miss Priscilla Graves, reporting of Skepsey, in a holiday 
Sunday tone, that his alcoholic partner might at any moment 
release him ; Mr. Septimus Barmby, with a hanged heavy 
look, suggestive of a wharfside crane swinging the ponder- 
ous thing he had to say. T have seen Miss Eadnor.’’ 

She was well ? the mother asked, and the grand basso 
pitched forth an affirmative. 

Dear sweet girl she is ! Mrs. Blathenoy exclaimed to 
Colney. 

He bowed. Very sweet. And can let fly on you, like 
a haggis, for a scratch.’^ 

She laughed, glad of an escape from the conversational 
formalities imposed on her by this Mrs. Victor EadnoPs 
mighty manner. ‘^But what girl worth anything! . . . 
We all can do that, I hope, for a scratch ! ’’ 

Mr. Barmby’s Profession dissented. 

Mr. Catkin appeared ; ten minutes after his Peridon. He 
had met Victor near the Exchange, and had left him hum- 
ming the non fu sogno of Ernani. 

‘^Ah, when Victor takes to Verdi, it’s a flat City, and 
wants a burst of drum and brass,” Colney said; and he 
hummed a few bars of the march in Attila, and shrugged. 
He and Victor had once admired that blatancy. 

Mr. Pempton appeared, according to anticipation. He 
sat himself beside Priscilla. Entered Mrs. John Cormyn, 
voluminous ; Mrs. Peter Yatt, effervescent ; Xataly’s own 
people were about her and she felt at home. 

Mrs. Blathenoy pushed a small thorn into it, by speaking 


254 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


of Captain Fenellan, and aside, as if sharing him with her. 
Kataly heard that Dartrey had been the guest of these 
Blathenoys. Even Dartrey was but a man ! 

Eather lower under her voice, the vain little creature 
asked : You knew her ? 

Her ? ’’ 

The cool counter-interrogation was disregarded. ^^So 
sad ! In the desert ! a cup of pure water worth more than 
barrow-loads of gold ! Poor woman ! 

^^Who?'' 

His wife.’’ 

^^Wife!” 

They were married ? ” 

Hataly could have cried : Snake ! Her play at brevity 
had certainly been foiled. She nodded gravely. A load of 
dusky wonders and speculations pressed at her bosom. She 
disdained to question the mouth which had bitten her. 

Mrs. Blathenoy, resolving, that despite the jealousy she 
excited, she would have her friend in Captain Fenellan, 
whom she liked — liked, she was sure, quite as innocently 
as any other woman of his acquaintance did, departed: and 
she hugged her innocence defiantly, with the mournful pride 
which will sometimes act as a solvent. 

A remark or two passed among the company upon her 
pretty face. 

Nataly murmured to^ Colney : ‘^Is there anything of 
Dartrey’s wife ? ” 

^^Dead,” he answered. 

^^When?” 

Months back. I had it from Simeon. You did n’t 
hear ? ” 

She shook her head. Her ears buzzed. If he had it from 
Simeon Fenellan, Victor must have known it. 

Her duties of hostess were conducted with the official 
smile. 

As soon as she stood alone, she dropped on a chair, like 
one who has taken a shot in the heart, and that hideous 
tumult of wild cries at her ears blankly ceased. Dartrey, 
Victor, Nesta, were shifting figures of the might-have-been : 
for whom a wretched erring woman, washed clean of her 
guilt by death, in a far land, had gone to her end : vainly 


NATALY IN ACTION 


255 


gone : and now another was here, a figure of wood, in man’s 
shape, conjured up by one of the three, to divide the two 
others ; likely to be fatal to her or to them : to her, she 
hoped, if the choice was to be; and beneath the leaden 
hope, her heart set to a rapid beating, a fainter, a chill at 
the core. 

She snatched for breath. She shut her eyes, and with 
open lips, lay waiting ; prepared to thank the kindness about 
to hurry her hence, out of the seas of pain, without pain. 

Then came sighs. The sad old servant in her bosom was 
resuming his labours. 

*But she had been near it — very near it ? A gush of 
pity for Victor, overwhelmed her hardness of mind. 

Unreflectingly, she tried her feet to support her, and 
tottered to the door, touched along to the stairs, and de- 
scended them, thinking strangely upon such a sudden 
weakness of body, when she would no longer have thought 
herself the weak woman. Her aim was to reach the 
library. She sat on the stairs midway, pondering over 
the length of her journey : and now her head was clearer ; 
for she was travelling to get E-ail way-guides, and might 
have had them from the hands of a footman, and imagined 
that she had considered it prudent to hide her investigation 
of those books : proofs of an understanding fallen backward 
to the state of infant and having to begin our drear ascent 
again. 

A slam of the kitchen stair-door restored her.. She be- 
trayed no infirmity of footing as she walked past Arlington 
in the hall; and she was alive to the voice of Skepsey 
presently on the door-steps. Arlington brought her a note. 

Victor had written : My love, I dine with Blathenoy in 
the City, at the Walworth. Business. Skepsey for clothes. 
Eight of us. Formal. A thousand embraces. Late.’^ 

Skepsey was ushered in. His wife had expired at noon, 
he said ; and he postured decorously the grief he could not 
feel, knowing that a lady would expect it of him. His wife 
had fallen down stone steps ; she died in hospital. He 
wished to say, she was no loss to the country ; but he was 
advised within of the prudence of abstaining from comment 
and trusting to his posture, and he squeezed a drop of con- 
ventional sensibility out of it, and felt improved. 


256 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Nataly sent a line to Victor: Dearest, I go to bed early, 
am tired. Dine well. Come to me in the morning.’’ 

She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when 
he had gone. The prospect of her being alone until the 
morning had been so absorbing a relief. 

She found a relief also in work at the book of the 
trains. A walk to the telegraph-station strengthened her. 
Especially after despatching a telegram to Mr. Dudley 
Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at Moorsedge, did 
she become stoutly nerved. The former was requested to 
meet her at Penshurst station at noon. Nesta was to be at 
the station for the Wells at three o’clock. 

From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the 
tap of Victor’s knuckle on her bedroom door next morning, 
she was not more reflectively conscious than a packet travel- 
ling to its destination by pneumatic tube. Nor was she 
acutely impressionable to the features and the voice she 
loved. 

You know of Skepsey? ” she said. 

^^Ah, poor Skepsey !” Victor frowned and heaved. 

One of us ought to stand beside him at the funeral.” 

Colney or Fenellan ? ” 

I will ask Mr. Durance.” 

“Do, my darling.” 

“ Victor, you did not tell me of Dartrey’s wife.” 

“There again! They all get released I Yes, Dartrey ! 
Dartrey has his luck too.” 

She closed her eyes, with the desire to be asleep. 

“You should have told me, dear.” 

“Well, my love! Well — poor Dartrey! I fancy I 
had n’t a confirmation of the news. I remember a horrible 
fit of envy on hearing the hint : not much more than a hint : 
serious illness, was it? — or expected event. Hardly worth 
while to trouble my dear soul, till certain. Anything about 
wives forces me to think of myself — my better self!” 

“ I had to hear of it first from Mrs. Blathenoy.” 

“You’ve heard of duels in dark rooms: — that was the 
case between Blathenoy and me last night for an hour.” 

She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness 
of heart. He kissed her on the forehead. 

Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to 


! 

1 ' 

KATALY IN ACTION 267 

him, was broken by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty 
minutes later. She had lain in a trance. 

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide 
; and take her step. Many were the years back since she had 
I taken a step ; less independently then than now; unregretted, 

' if fatal. Her brain was heated for the larger view of 
things and the swifter summing of them. It could put 
the man at a remove from her and say, that she had lived 
; with him and suffered intensely. It gathered him to her 
: breast rejoicing in their union : the sharper the scourge, the 
keener the exultation. But she had one reproach to deafen 
i and beat down. This did not come on her from the world : 

she and the world were too much foot to foot on the 
i; antagonist's line, for her to listen humbly. It came of her 
I quick summary survey of him, which was unnoticed by the 
I woman’s present fiery mind as being new or strange in any 
; way : simply it was a fact she now read ; and it directed her 
. to reproach herself for an abasement beneath his leadership, 
a blind subserviency and surrender of her faculties to his 
I greater powers, such as no soul of a breathing body should 
yield to man : not to the highest, not to the Titan, not to 
the most Godlike of men. Under cloak, they demand it. 

' They demand their bane. 

And Victor! . . . She had seen into him. 

The reproach on her was, that she, in her worship, had 
been slave, not helper. Scarcely was she irreproachable in 
the character of slave. If it had been but utter slave ! she 
i phrased the words, for a further reproach. She remembered 
j having at times murmured, dissented. And it would have 
I been a desperate proud thought to comfort a slave, that 
never once had she known even a secret opposition to the 
will of her lord. 

But she had : she recalled instances. Up they rose ; up 
rose everything her mind ranged over, subsiding imme- 
diately when the service was done. She had not conceived 
her beloved to be infallible, surest of guides in all earthly 
matters. Her intellect had sometimes protested. 

What, then, had moved her to swamp it ? 

[' Her heart answered. And that heart also was ar- 
raigned : and the heart’s fieshly habitation acting on it 
besides : so fiagellant of herself was she : covertly, however, 

17 


258 


ONE OF OtiR CONQUERORS 


and as the chaste among women can consent to let our 
animal face them. Not grossly, still perceptibly to her 
penetrative hard eye on herself, she saw the senses of the 
woman under a charm. She saw, and swam whirling with 
a pang of revolt from her personal being and this mortal 
kind. 

Her rational intelligence righted her speedily. She 
could say in truth, by proof, she loved the man : nature’s 
love, heart’s love, soul’s love. She had given him her 
life. 

It was a happy cross-current recollection, that the very 
beginning and spring of this wild cast of her life, issued 
from something he said and did (merest of airy gestures) to 
signify the blessing of life — how good and fair it is. A 
drooping mood in her had been struck ; he had a look like 
the winged lyric up in blue heavens : he raised the head of 
the young flower from its contemplation of grave-mould. 
That was when he had much to bear : Mrs. Burman pres- 
ent : and when the stranger in their household had begun 
to pity him and have a dread of her feelings. The lucent 
splendour of his eyes was memorable, a light above the 
rolling oceans of Time. 

She had given him her life, little aid. She might have 
closely counselled, wound in and out with his ideas. Sen- 
sible of capacity, she confessed to the having been morally 
subdued, physically as well ; swept onward ; and she was 
arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the river-floods 
by the dip of a branch. Time that it should be! But was 
not Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system 
for the education of women, right when he declared them 
to be unfitted to speak an opinion on any matter external 
to the household or in a crisis of the household ? She had 
not agreed with him: he presented stinging sentences, 
which irritated more than they enlightened. Now it 
seemed to her, that the model women or men make pleas- 
ant slaves, not true mates : they lack the worldly training 
to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances. 
There is an exotic fostering of the senses for women, 
not the strengthening breath of vital common air. If 
good fortune is with them, all may go well : the stake of 
their fates is upon the perpetual smooth flow of good 


NATALY IN ACTION 


259 


fortune. She had never joined to the cry of the women. 
Few among them were having it in the breast as loudly. 

Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel 
had reduced her mind to propitiate a simulacrum, reflected 
from out, of an enthroned Society within it, by an advocacy 
of the existing laws and rules and habits. Eminently ser- 
vile is the tolerated lawbreaker : none so conservative. 
Not until we are driven back upon an un violated Nature, 
do we call to the intellect to think radically : and then we 
begin to think of our fellows. 

^Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the 
doing of the right thing : have quitted the carriage at the 
station, and secured the ticket, and entered the train, count- 
ing the passage of time for a simple rapid hour before we 
have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to another ; 
then likewise the mind is lighted for radiation. That do- 
ing of the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardice 
— any evil name — is one of the mighty reliefs, equal to 
happiness, of longer duration. 

Nataly had it. But her mind was actually radiating, and 
the comfort to her heart evoked the image of Dartrey 
Fenellan. She saw a possible reason for her bluntness 
to the coming scene with Dudley. 

At once she said. No ! and closed the curtain ; know- 
ing what was behind, counting it nought. She repeated 
almost honestly her positive negative. How we are mixed 
of the many elements ! she thought, as an observer ; and 
self-justifyingly thought on, and with truth, that duty 
urged her upon this journey ; and proudly thought, that she 
had not a shock of the painful great organ in her breast at 
the prospect at the end, or any apprehension of its failure to 
carry her through. 

Yet the need of peace or some solace needed to prepare 
her for the interview turned her imagination burningly on 
Dartrey. She would not allow herself to meditate over 
hopes and schemes : — Nesta free : Dartrey free. She vowed 
3 to her soul sacredly — and she was one of those in whom 
I the Divinity lives, that they may do so — not to speak a 
\ word for the influencing of Dudley save the one fact. Conse- 
quently, for a personal indulgence, she mused ; she caressed 
{! maternally the object of her musing; of necessity, she ex- 


260 ONE OP OUK CONQUERORS 

eluded Nesta ; but in tenderness she gave Dartrey a fair one 
to love him. 

The scene was waved away. That one so loving him, 
partly worthy of him, ready to traverse the world now 
beside him — who could it be other than she who knew and 
prized his worth ? Foolish ! It is one of the hatefuller 
scourges upon women whenever, a little shaken themselves, 
they muse upon some man’s image, that they cannot put in 
motion the least bit of drama without letting feminine self 
play a part; generally to develop into a principal part. 
The apology makes it a melancholy part. 

Dartrey’s temper of the caged lion dominated by his 
tamer, served as key-note for any amount of saddest colour- 
ing. He controlled the brute : but he held the contempt of 
danger, the love of strife, the passion for adventure ; he had 
crossed the desert of human anguish. He of all men required 
a devoted mate, merited her. Of all men living, he was the 
hardest to match with a woman — with a woman deserving 
him. 

The train had quitted London. How for the country, 
now for free breathing ! She who two days back had come 
from Alps, delighted in the look on flat green flelds. It was 
under the hallucination of her saying in flight adieu to them, 
and to England ; and, that somewhere hidden, to be found 
in Asia, Africa, America, was the man whose ideal of life 
was higher than enjoyment. His caged brute of a temper 
offered opportunities for delicious petting ; the sweetest a 
woman can bestow : it lifts her out of timidity into an 
adoration still palpitatingly fearful. Ah, but familiarity, 
knowledge, confirmed assurance of his character, lift her to 
another stage, above the pleasures. May she not prove to 
him how really matched with him she is, to disdain the 
pleasures, cheerfully accept the burdens, meet death, if need 
be ; readily face it as the quietly grey to-morrow : at least, 
show herself to her hero for a woman — the incredible being 
to most men — who treads the terrors as well as the pleasures 
of humanity beneath her feet, and may therefore have some 
pride in her stature. Ay, but only to feel the pride of 
standing not so shamefully below his level beside him. 

Woods were flying past the carriage-windows. Her soli- 
tary companion was of the class of the admiring gentlemen. 


NATALY IN ACTION 


261 


Presently he spoke. She answered. He spoke again. Her 
mouth smiled, and her accompanying look of abstract benev- 
olence arrested the tentative allurement to conversation. 

Hew ideas were set revolving in her. Dartrey and Victor 
grew to a likeness ; they became hazily one man, and the 
mingled phantom complimented her on her preserving a 
good share of the beauty of her youth. The face perhaps : 
the figure rather too well suits the years ! she replied. To 
reassure her, this Dartrey-Victor drew her close and kissed 
her ; and she was confused and passed into the breast of 

operation at the hands of the 
stopped. Penshurst ? ’’ she 


Mrs. Burman expecting an 
surgeons. The train had 
said. 

Penshurst is the next 
Here was a theme for him ! 


station,’^ said the gentleman. 
The stately mansion, the noble 
grounds, and Sidney ! He discoursed of them. The hand- 
some lady appeared interested. She was interested also by 
his description of a neighbouring village, likely one hundred 
years hence to be a place of pilgrimage for Americans and 
far Australians. Age, he said, improves true beauty ; and 
his eyelids indicated a levelling to perform the soft intent- 
ness. Mechanically, a ball rose in her throat; the remark 
was illuminated by a saying of Colney’s, with regard to his 
countrymen at the play of courtship. Ho laughter came. 
The gentleman talked on. 

All fancies and internal communications left her. Slow- 
ness of motion brought her to the plain piece of work she 
had to do, on a colourless earth, that seemed foggy ; but 
one could see one’s way. Eesolution is a form of light, our 
native light in this dubious world. 

Dudley Sowerby opened her carriage-door. They greeted. 

You have seen Hesta ? ” she said. 

^^Hot for two days. You have not heard? The Miss 
iDuvidneys have gone to Brighton.” 

' They are rather in advance of the Season.” 

\ She thanked him for meeting her. He was grateful for 
the summons. 

Informing the mother of his betrothed, that he had ridden 
over from Cronidge, he speculated on the place to select for 
her luncheon, and he spoke of his horse being led up and 
down outside the station. Hataly inquired for the hour of 


262 


ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


the next train to London. He called to one of the porters, 
obtained and imparted the time ; evidently now, as shown 
by an unevenness of his lifted brows, expecting news of 
some little weight. 

Your husband is quite well ? ” he said, in affection for 
the name of husband. 

Mr. Radnor is well ; I have to speak to you ; I have 
more than time.’^ 

You will lunch at the inn ? ’’ 

I shall not eat. We will walk.’’ 

They crossed the road and passed under trees. 

‘ ^ My mother was to have called on the Miss Duvidneys. 
They left hurriedly ; I think it was unanticipated by Nesta. 
I venture . . . you pardon the liberty . . . she allows me 
to entertain hopes. Mr. Radnor, 1 am hardly too bold in 
thinking ... I trust, in appealing to you ... at least I 
can promise.” 

^^Mr. Sowerby, you have done my daughter the honour 
to ask her hand in marriage.” 

He said : I have,” and had much to say besides, but 
deferred : a blow was visible. The father had been more 
encourageing to him than the mother. 

You have not known of any circumstance that might 
cause hesitation in asking ? ” 

Miss Radnor ? ” 

‘^My daughter : — you have to think of your family.” 
Indeed, Mrs. Radnor, I was coming to London to-mor- 
row, with the consent of my family.” 

You address me as Mrs. Radnor. I have not the legal 
right to the name.” 

^^Not legal ! ” said he, with a catch at the word. 

He spun round in her sight, though his demeanour was 
manfully rigid. 

Have I understood, madam ? . . . ” 

You would not request me to repeat it. Is that your 
horse the man is leading ? ” 

My horse : it must be my horse.” 

Mount and ride back. Leave me : I shall not eat. Re- 
flect, by yourself. You are in the position of one who is 
not allowed to decide by his feelings. Mr. Radnor you 
know where to find.” 


A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN 


263 


But surely, some food ? I cannot have misappre- 
hended?’’ 

I cannot eat. I think you have understood me clearly.” 

You wish me to go ? ” 

I beg.” 

‘‘It pains me, dear madam.” 

“ It relieves me, if you will. Here is your horse.” 

She gave her hand. He touched it and bent. He looked 
at her. A surge of impossible questions rolled to his 
mouth and rolled back, with the thought of an incredible 
thing, that her manner, more than her words, held him 
from doubting. 

“I obey you,” he said. 

“You are kind.” 

He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bow- 
ing, to one of the wayside trees, cantered. The man was 
gone ; but not from Hataly’s vision that face of wet chalk 
under one of the shades of fire. 


CHAPTEB XXVI 

IN WHICH WE SEE A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN ENDEAV- 
OURING TO EXAMINE A SPECTRE OF HIMSELF 

Dudley rode back to Cronidge with his thunderstroke. It 
filled him, as in those halls of political clamour, where ex- 
j planatory speech is not accepted, because of a drowning tide 
I of hot blood on both sides. He sought to win attention by 
submitting a resolution, to the effect, that he would the next 
morning enter into the presence of Mr. Victor Kadnor, bear- 
ing his family’s feelings, for a discussion upon them. But 
the brutish tumult, in addition to surcharging, encased him : 
he could not rightly conceive the nature of feelings : men 
were driving shoals ; he had lost hearing and touch of 
individual men ; had become a house of angrily opposing 
parties. 

He was hurt, he knew ; and therefore he supposed himself 
injured, though there were contrary outcries, and he admitted 
I that he stood free ; he had not been inextricably deceived. 


264 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


The girl was caught away to the thinnest of wisps in a 
dust-whirl. Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of 
a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, 
sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments; 
which were a diver’s wreck, where an armoured livid subter- 
marine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously 
light in heaviness; trebling his hundredweights to keep 
him from dancing like a bladder-block of elastic lumber ; 
thinking occasionally, amid the mournful spectacle, of the 
atmospheric pipe of communication with the world above, 
whereby he was deafened yet sustained. One tug at it, and 
he was up on the surface, disengaged from the hideous 
harness, joyfully no more that burly phantom cleaving 
green slime, free ! and the roaring stopped ; the world 
looked flat, foreign, a place of crusty promise. His wreck, 
animated by the dim strange fish below, appeared fairer; 
it winked lurefully when abandoned. 

The internal state of a gentleman who detested intangible 
metaphor as heartily as the vulgarest of our gobble-gobbets 
hate it, metaphor only can describe ; and for the reason, that 
he had in him just something more than is within the com- 
pass of the language of the meat-markets. He had — and 
had it not the less because he fain would not have had — 
sufficient stuff to furnish forth a souPs epic encounter be- 
tween Nature and Circumstance : and metaphor, simile, 
analysis, all the fraternity of old lamps for lighting our 
abysmal darkness, have to be rubbed, that we may get a 
glimpse of the fray. 

Free, and rejoicing; without the wish to be free; at the 
same time humbly and sadly acquiescing in the stronger 
claim of his family to pronounce the decision : such was the 
second stage of Dudley’s perturbation after the blow. A 
letter of Nesta’s writing was in his pocket : he knew her 
address. He could not reply to her until he had seen her 
father : and that interview remained necessarily prospective 
until he had come to his exact resolve, not omitting his 
critical approval of the sentences giving it shape, stamp, 
dignity — a noble’s crest, as it were. 

Nesta wrote briefly. The apostrophe was, ^^Dear Mr. 
Sowerby.” She had engaged to send her address. Her 
father had just gone. The Miss Duvidneys had left the 


A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN 


265 


hotel yesterday for the furnished house facing the sea. 
According to arrangements, she had a livery-stable hack, 
and had that morning trotted out to the downs with a 
riding-master and company, one of whom was an agree- 
able lady.^^ 

He noticed approvingly her avoidance of an allusion to 
the ^^Delphica^^ of Mr. Durance’s incomprehensible serial 
story, or whatever it was ; which, as he had shown her, 
annoyed him, for its being neither fact nor fun ; and she 
had insisted on the fun ; and he had painfully tried to see 
it or anything of a meaning ; and it seemed to him now, 
that he had been humiliated by the obedience to her lead ; 
she had offended by her harping upon Delphica. However, 
here it was unmentioned. He held the letter out to seize it 
in the large, entire. 

Her handwriting was good, as good as the writing of the 
most agreeable lady on earth. Dudley did not blame her 
for letting the lady be deceived in her — if she knew her 
position. She might be ignorant of it. And to strangers, 
to chance acquaintances, even to friends, the position, of the 
loathsome name, was not materially important. Marriage 
altered the view. He sided with his family. 

He sided, edgeing away, against his family. But a vision 
of the earldom coming to him, stirred reverential objections, 
composed of all which his unstained family could protest in 
religion, to repudiate an alliance with a stained house, and 
the guilty of a condonation of immorality. Who would 
have imagined Mr. Eadnor a private sinner flaunting for 
one of the righteous ? And she, the mother, a lady — quite 
a lady ; having really a sense of duty, sense of honour ! 
That she must be a lady, Dudley was convinced. He be- 
held through a porous crape, woven of formal respectful- 
ness, with threads of personal disgust, the scene, striking 
him drearly like a distant great mansion’s conflagration 
across moorland at midnight, of a lady’s breach of bonds 
and plunge of all for love. How had it been concealed ? 
In Dudley’s upper sphere, everything was exposed : Scandal 
walked naked and unashamed — figurante of the polite world. 
But still this lady was of the mint and coin, a true lady. 
Handsome now, she must have been beautiful. And a com- 
prehensible pride (for so would Dudley have borne it) keeps 


266 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the forsaken man silent up to death : . . . grandly silent ; 
but the loss of such a woman is enough to kill a man ! Not 
in time, though ! Legitimacy evidently, by the mother’s 
confession, cannot protect where it is wanted. Dudley was 
optically affected by a round spot of the world swinging its 
shadow over Nesta. 

He pitied, and strove to be sensible of her. The effort 
succeeded so well, that he was presently striving to be in- 
sensible. The former state was the mounting of a wall; 
the latter was a sinking through a chasm. There would 
be family consultations, abhorrent; his father’s agonized 
amazement at the problem presented to a family of scrupu- 
lous principles and pecuniary requirements ; his mother’s 
blunt mention of the abominable name — mediaevally vin- 
dicated in champions of certain princely families indeed, 
but morally condemned; always under condemnation of the 
Church : a blot : and handed down : Posterity, and it might 
be a titled posterity, crying out. A man in the situation 
of Dudley could not think solely of himself. The nobles 
of the land are bound in honour to their posterity. There 
you have one of the prominent permanent distinctions be- 
tween them and the commonalty. 

His mother would again propose her chosen bride for him : 
Edith Averst, with the dowry of a present one thousand 
pounds per annum, and prospect of six or so, excluding Sir 
John’s estate. Carping, in Leicestershire ; a fair estate, 
likely to fall to Edith ; consumption seized her brothers as 
they ripened. A fair girl too ; only Dudley did not love 
her; he wanted to love. He was learning the trick from 
this other one, who had become obscured and diminished, 
tainted, to the thought of her ; yet not extinct. Sight of 
her was to be dreaded. 

Unguiltily tainted, .in herself she was innocent. That 
constituted the unhappy invitation to him to swallow one 
half of his feelings, which had his world’s blessing on it, 
for the beneficial enlargement and enthronement of the 
baser unblest half, which he hugged and distrusted. Can 
innocence issue of the guilty ? He asked it, hopeing it might 
be possible : he had been educated in his family to believe, 
that the laws governing human institutions are divine — 
until History has altered them. They are altered, to pre- 


A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN 


267 


sent a fresh bulwark against the infidel. His conservative 
mind, retiring in good order, occupied the next rearward 
post of resistance. Secretly behind it, the man was proud 
of having a heart to beat for the cause of the besiegeing 
enemy, in the present instance. When this was blabbed to 
him, and he had owned it, he attributed his weakness to 
excess of nature, the liking for a fair face. — Oh, but 
more ! spirit was in the sweet eyes. She led him — she did 
lead him in spiritual things ; led him out of common circles 
of thought, into refreshing new spheres ; he had reminis- 
cences of his having relished the juices of the not quite ob- 
viously comic, through her indications : and really, in 
spite of her inferior flimsy girl’s education, she could boast 
her acquirements ; she was quick, startlingly ; modest, too, 
in commerce with a slower mind that carried more ; though 
she laughed and was a needle for humour : she taught him 
at times to put away his contempt of the romantic ; she had 
actually shown him, that his expressed contempt of it dis- 
guised a dread : as it did, and he was conscious of the fool- 
ishness of it now while pursuing her image, while his 
intelligence and senses gave her the form and glory of 
young morning. 

Wariness counselled him to think it might be merely the 
play of her youth; and also the disposition of a man in 
harness of business, exaggeratingly to prize an imagined 
finding of the complementary feminine of himself. Ven- 
erating purity as he did, the question, whether the very 
sweetest of pure young women, having such an origin, must 
not at some time or other show trace of the origin, surged 
up. If he could only have been sure of her moral exemp- 
tion from taint, a generous ardour, in reserve behind his 
anxious dubieties, would have precipitated Dudley to quench 
disapprobation and brave the world under a buckler of those 
monetary advantages, which he had but stoutly to })lead 
with the House of Cantor, for the speedy overcoming of a 
reluctance to receive the nameless girl and prodigious 
heiress. His family’s instruction of him, and his inherited 
tastes, rendered the aspect of a Hature stripped of tlie 
clothing of the laws offensive down to devilish : we grant 
her certain steps, upon certain conditions accompanied by 
ceremonies ; and when she violates them, she becomes visibly 


268 


ONE OF OTJE CONQUEBORS 


again the revolutionary wicked old beast bent on levelling 
our sacredest edifices. An alliance with any of her vota- 
ries, appeared to Dudley as an act of treason to his house, 
his class, and his tenets. And nevertheless he was haunted 
by a cry of criminal happiness for and at the commission 
of the act. 

He would not decide to be precipitate,’^ and the days 
ran their course, until Lady Grace Halley arrived at Cro- 
nidge, a widow. Lady Cantor spoke to her of Dudley’s 
unfathomable gloom. Lady Grace took him aside. 

She said, without preface: “You ’ve heard, have you !” 

“You were aware of it?” said he, and his tone was irri- 
table with a rebuke. 

“ Coming through town, for the first time yesterday. I 
had it — of all men! — from a Sir Abraham Quatley, to 
whom I was recommended to go, about my husband’s shares 
in a South American Railway; and we talked, and it came 
out. He knows; he says, it is not generally known; and 
he likes, respects Mr. Victor Radnor; we are to keep the 
secret. Hum? He had heard of your pretensions; and 
our relationship, etc. : ^ esteemed ’ it — you know the City 
dialect — his duty to mention, etc. That was after I had 
spied on his forehead the something I wormed out of his 
mouth. What are you going to do ? ” 

“What can I do?” 

“ Are you fond of the girl ? ” 

An attachment was indicated, as belonging to the case. 
She was not a woman to whom the breathing of pastoral 
passion would be suitable; yet he saw that she despised 
him for a lover; and still she professed to understand his 
dilemma. Perplexity at the injustice of fate and persons 
universally, put a wrinkled mask on his features and the 
expression of his feelings. They were torn, and the world 
was torn; and what he wanted, was delay, time for him 
to define his feelings and behold a recomposed picture of 
the world. He had already taken six days. He pleaded 
the shock to his family. 

“ You won’t have such a chance again,” she said. Shrugs 
had set in. 

They agreed as to the behaviour of the girl’s mother. It 
reflected on the father, he thought. 


A SMALL THING OK A GKEAT 


269 


^‘Difficult thing to proclaim, before an engagement!’’^ 
Her shoulders were restless. 

“When a man’s feelings get entangled ! ” 

“Oh ! a man’s feelings I I ’m your British Jury for a 
woman’s.” 

“ He has married her ? ” 

She declared to not knowing particulars. She could lib 
smoothly. 

The next day she was on the line to London, armed 
with tlie proposal of an appointment for the Hon. Dudley 
to meet “the girl’s father.” 


CHAPTEE XXVII 

CONTAINS WHAT IS A SMALL THING OK A GREAT, AS THE 
SOUL OP THE CHIEF ACTOR MAY DECIDE 

Skepsey ushered Lady Grace into his master’s private 
room, and entertained her during his master’s absence. 
He had buried his wife, he said: she feared, seeing his 
posture of the soaping of hands at one shoulder, that he 
i was about to bewail it; and he did wish to talk of it, to 
[ show his modest companionship with her in loss, and how 
a consolation for our sorrows may be obtained : but he won 
her approval, by taking the aceeptable course between the 
dues to the subject and those to his hearer, as a model cab 
should drive considerate equally of horse and fare. 

A day of holiday at Hampstead, after the lowering of 
the poor woman’s bones into earth, had been followed by 
a descent upon London; and at night he had found himself 
in the immediate neighbourhood of a public house, noted 
: for sparring exhibitions and instructions on the first floor; 
and he was melancholy, unable quite to disperse “the 
ravens ” flocking to us on such days : though, if we ask 
why we have to go out of the world, there is a correspond- 
ing inquiry, of what good was our coming into it; and 
unless we are doing good work for our country, the answer 
is not satisfactory — except, that we are as well gone, 


270 


ONE OE OUE CONQEEROKS 


Thinking which, he was accosted by a young woman: per- 
fectly respectable, in every way : who inquired if he had 
seen a young man enter the door. She described him, and 
reviled the temptations of those houses; and ultimately, 
as she insisted upon going in to look for the young man 
and use her persuasions to withdraw him from “that snare 
of Satan,” he had accompanied her, and he had gone 
upstairs and brought the young man down. But friends, 
or the acquaintances they call friends, were with him, and 
they were “in drink,” and abused the young woman; and 
she had her hand on the young man’s arm, quoting Scrip- 
ture. Sad to relate of men bearing the name of English- 
men — and it was hardly much better if they pleaded 
intoxication ! — they were not content to tear the young 
man from her grasp, they hustled her, pushed her out, 
dragged her in the street. 

“It became me to step to her defence: she was meek,” 
said Skepsey. “She had a great opinion of the efficacy 
of quotations from Scripture; she did not recriminate. I 
was able to release her and the young man she protected, 
on condition of my going upstairs to give a display of 
my proficiency. 1 had assured them, that the poor fellows 
who stood against me were not a proper match. And of 
course, they jeered, but they had the evidence, on the 
pavement. So I went up with them. I was heavily 
oppressed, I wanted relief, I put on the gloves. He was 
a bigger man ; they laughed at the little one. I told them, 
it depended upon a knowledge of first principles, and the 
power to apply them. I will not boast, my lady: my 
junior by ten years, the man went down; he went down a 
second time; and the men seemed surprised; I told them, 
it was nothing but first principles put into action. I men- 
tion the incident, for the extreme relief it afforded me at 
the close of a dark day.” 

“So you cured your grief!” said Lady Grace; and Skep- 
sey made way for his master. 

Victor’s festival-lights were kindled, beholding her; 
cressets on the window-sill, lamps inside. 

“Am I so welcome ?” There was a pull of emotion at 
her smile. “ What with your little factotum and you, we 
are flattered to perdition when we come here. He has 


A Small thikg or a great 


271 


been proposing, by suggestion, like a Court-physician, the 
putting on of his boxing-gloves, for the consolation of the 
widowed : — meant most kindly ! and it ’s a thousand pities 
women haven’t their padded gloves.” 

“ Oh ! but our boxing-gloves can do mischief enough. 
You have something to say, I see.” 

How do you see ? ” 

‘‘Tush, tush.” 

The silly ring of her voice and the pathless tattle 
changed; she talked to suit her laden look. “You hit it. 
I come from Dudley. He knows the facts. I wish to serve 
you, in every way.” 

Victor’s head had lifted. 

“ Who was it ? ” 

“No enemy.” 

“Who?” 

“ Her mother. She did rightly.” 

“Certainly she did,” said Victor, and he thought th?.t 
instantaneously of the thing done. “ Oh, then she spoke 
to him! She has kept it from me. For now nearly a 
week — six days — I ’ve seen her spying for something she 
expected, like a face behind a door three inches ajar. She 
has not been half alive ; she refused explanations ; — she 
was expecting to hear from him, of him : — the decision, 
whatever it’s to be!” 

“I can’t aid you there,” said Lady Grace. “He’s one 
of the unreadables. He names Tuesday next week.” 

“By all means.” 

“She?” 

“ Fredi ? — poor Fredi ! — ah, my poor girl, yes ! — No, 
she knows nothing. Here is the truth of it: — she, the 
legitimate, lives: they say she lives. Well, then, she 
lives against all rules physical or medical, lives by sheer 
force of will — it ’s a miracle of the power of a human crea- 
ture to ... I have it from doctors, friends, attendants, 
they can’t guess what she holds on, to keep her breath. 

— All the happiness in life ! — if only it could benefit her. 
But it ’s the cause of death to us. Do you see, dear friend; 

— you are a friend, proved friend,” he took her hand, and 
held and pressed it, in great need of a sanguine response 
to emphasis; and having this warm feminine hand, his 


'■212 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 

ideas ran off with it. “The friend I need! Yon have 
courage. My Nataly , poor dear — she can endure, in her 
quiet way. A woman of courage would take her place 
beside me and compel the world to do her homage, help; 
— a bright ready smile does it I She would never be 
beaten. Of course, we could have lived under a bushel — 
stifled next to death! But I am for light, air — battle, if 
you like. I want a comrade, not a not that I com- 

plain. I respect, pity, love — I do love her, honour: only, 
we want something else — courage — to face the enemy. 
Quite right, that she should speak to Dudley Sowerby. 
He has to know, must know; all who deal closely with 
us must know. But see a moment : I am waiting to see 
the impediment dispersed, which puts her at an inequality 
with the world : and then I speak to all whom it concerns : 
not before; for her sake. How is it now ? Dudley will 
ask . . . you understand. And when I am forced to con- 
fess, that the mother, the mother of the girl he seeks in 
marriage, is not yet in that state herself, probably at that 
very instant the obstacle has crumbled to dust ! I say, 
probably; I have information — doctors, friends, attend- 
ants — they all declare it cannot last outside a week. But 
you are here — true, I could swear! a touch of a hand tells 
me. A woman’s hand? Well, yes: I read by the touch 
of a woman’s hand: — betrays more than her looks or her 
lips! ” He sank his voice. “I don’t talk of condoling: if 
you are in grief, you know I share it.” He kissed her 
hand, and laid it on her lap ; eyed it, and met her eyes ; 
took a header into her eyes, and lost himself. A nip of 
his conscience moved his tongue to say: “As for guilt, if 
it were known ... a couple of ascetics- absolutely!” 
But this was assumed to be unintelligible; and it was 
merely the apology to his conscience in communion with 
the sprite of a petticoated fair one who was being subjected 
to tender little liberties, necessarily addressed in enigmas. 
He righted immediately, under a perception of the thor- 
oughbred’s contempt for the barriers of wattled sheep; and 
caught the word “guilt,” to hide the Philistine citizen’s 
lapse, by relating historically, in abridgement, the honest 
beauty of the passionate loves of the two whom the world 
proscribed for honestly loving. There was no guilt. He 


A SMALL THING OR A GREAT 


273 


harped on the word, to erase the recollection of his first 
use of it. 

“ Fiddle, ” said Lady Grace. ‘‘ The thing happened. You 
have now to carry it through. You require a woman’s aid 
m a social matter. Kely on me, for what I can do. You 
will see Dudley on Tuesday ? I will write. Be plain with 
him; not ^forgetting the gilding, I need not remark. 
Your Nesta has no aversion ? ” 

‘^Admires, respects, likes; is quite — is willing.” 

^^Good enough beginning.” She rose, for the atmos- 
phere was heated, rather heavy. ^^And if one proves to 
be of aid, you ’ll own that a woman has her place in the 
battle.” 

The fair black-clad widow’s quick and singular inter- 
wreathing of the evanescent pretty pouts and frowns dim- 
pled like the brush of the wind on a sunny pool in a shady 
place; and her forehead was close below his chin, her lips 
not far. Her apparel was attractively mourning. Widows 
in mourning, when they do not lean over extremely to the 
Stygian shore, with the complexions of the drugs which 
expedited the defunct to the ferry, provoke the manly arm 
within reach of them to pluck their pathetic blooming 
persons clean away from it. What of the widow who 
visibly likes the living ? Compassion, sympathy, impulse; 
and gratitude, impulse again, living warmth; and a spring 
of the blood to wrestle with the King of Terrors for the 
other poor harper’s half-nightcapped Eurydice; and a 
thirst, sudden as it is overpowering; and the solicitude, a 
reflective solicitude, to put the seal on a thing, and call it 
a fact, to the astonishment of history; and a kick of our 
naughty youth in its coffin ; — all the insurgencies of 
Nature, with her colonel of the regiment absent, and her 
veering trick to drive two vessels at the cross of a track 
into collision, combine for doing that, which is very much 
more, and which affects us at the time so much less than 
did the pressure of a soft wedded hand by our own else- 
where pledged one. On the contrary, we triumph, Ave 
have the rich flavour of the fruit for our pains ; we com- 
mission the historian to write in hieroglyphs a round big 
fact. 

The lady passed through the trial submitting, stiffening 

18 


274 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


her shoulders, and at the close, shutting her eyes. She 
stood cool in her blush, and eyed him like one gravely 
awakened. Having been embraced and kissed, she had to 
consider her taste for the man, and acknowledge a neat- 
ness of impetuosity in the deed; and he was neither apolo- 
gizing culprit nor glorying bandit when it was done, but 
something of the lyric God tempering his fervours to a 
pleased sereneness, not offering a renewal of them. He 
glowed transparently. He said: “You are the woman to 
take a front place in the battle ! With this woman beside 
him, it was a conquered world. 

Comparisons, in the jotting souvenirs of a woman of her 
class and set, favoured him ; for she disliked enterprising 
libertines and despised stumbling youths ; and the genial 
simple glow of his look assured her that the vanished fiery 
moment would not be built on by a dating master. She 
owned herself. Or did she ? Some understanding of how 
the other woman had been won to the leap with him, was 
drawing in about her. She would have liked to beg for 
the story; and she could as little do that as bring her 
tongue to reproach. If we come to the den! she said to 
her thought of reproach. Our semi-civilization makes it a 
den, where a scent in his nostrils will spring the half- 
tamed animal away to wildness. And she had come unan- 
ticipatingly, without design, except perhaps to get a 
superior being to direct and restrain a gambler’s hand; 
perhaps for the fee of a temporary pressure. 

“ I may be able to help a little — I hope ! ” she fetched a 
breath to say, while her eyelids mildly sermonized; and 
immediately she talked of her inheritance of property in 
stocks and shares. 

Victor commented passingly on the soundness of them, 
and talked of projects he entertained : — Parliament ! 
“ But I have only to mention it at home, and my poor girl 
will set in for shrinking.” 

He doated on the diverse aspect of the gallant woman of 
the world. 

“You succeed in everything you do,” said she, and she 
cordially believed it; and that belief set the neighbour 
memory palpitating. Success folded her waist, was warm 
upon her lips : she worshipped the figure of Success. 


A SMALL THING OR A GREAT 275 

‘‘I can’t consent to fail, it ’s true, when my mind is on 
a thing,” Victor rejoined. 

He looked his mind on Lady Grace. The shiver of a 
maid went over her. These transparent visages, where the 
thought which is half design is perceived as a lightning, 
strike lightning into the physically feebler. Her hand 
begged, with the open palm, her head shook thrice; and 
though she did not step back, he bowed to the negation, 
and then she gave him a grateful shadow of a smile, re- 
lieved, with a startled view of how greatly relieved, by 
that sympathetic deference in the wake of the capturing 
intrepidity. 

I am to name Tuesday for Dudley ? ” she suggested. 

‘‘At any hour he pleases to appoint.” 

“A visit signifies . . .” 

“ Whatever it signifies ! ” 

“I’m thinking of the bit of annoyance.” 

“ To me ? Anything appointed, finds me ready the next 
minute.” 

Her smile was flatteringly bright. “By the way, keep 
your City people close about you: entertain as much as 
possible; dine them,” she said. 

“ At home ? ” 

“Better. Sir Eodwell Blachington, Sir Abraham Quat- 
ley: and their wives. There’s no drawing back now. 
And I will meet them.” 

She received a compliment. She was on the foot to go. 

But she had forgotten the Tiddler mine. 

The Tiddler mine was leisurely mounting. Victor stated 
the figures; he saluted her hand, and Lady Grace passed 
out, with her heart on the top of them, and a buzz about it 
of the unexpected having occurred. She had her experi- 
ences to match new patterns in events; though not very 
many. Compared with gambling, the game of love was 
an idle entertainment. Compared with other players, this 
man was gifted. 

Victor went in to Mr. Inchling’s room, and kept Inch- 
ling from speaking, that he might admire him for he 
knew not what, or knew not well what. The good fellow 
was devoted to his wife. Victor in old days had called the 
wife Mrs. Grundy. She gossiped, she was censorious; 


m 


OiSTE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


she knew — could not but know — the facts; yet never by 
a shade was she disrespectful. He had a curious recollec- 
tion of how his knowledge of Inchling and his wife being 
always in concert, entirely — whatever they might think in 
private — devoted to him in action, had influenced, if it 
had not originally sprung, his resolve to cast off the pesti- 
lential cloak of obscurity shortening his days, and emerge 
before a world he could illumine to give him back splendid 
reflections. Inchling and his wife, it was: because the 
two were one : and if one, and subservient to him, know- 
ing all the story, why, it foreshadowed a conquered world! 
They were the one pulse of the married Grundy beating in 
his hand. So it had been. 

He rattled his views upon Indian business, to hold Inch- 
ling silent, and let his mind dwell almost lovingly on the 
good faithful spouse, who had no phosphorescent writing 
of a recent throbbing event on the four walls of his 
room. 

Hataly was not so generously encountered in idea. 

He felt and regretted this. He greeted her with a 
doubled affectionateness. Her pitiable deficiency of cour- 
age, excusing a man for this and that small matter in the 
thick of the conflict, made demands on him for gentle 
treatment. 

‘‘You have not seen any one?’’ she asked. 

“ City people. And you, my love ? ” 

“Mr. Barmby called. He has gone down to Tunbridge 
Wells for a week, to some friend there.” She added, in 
pain of thought: “I have seen Dartrey. He has brought 
Lord Clanconan to town, for a consultation, and expects 
he will have to take him to Brighton.” 

“Brighton? What a life for a man like Dartrey, at 
Brighton! ” 

Her breast heaved. “If I cannot see my Nesta there, 
he will bring her up to me for a day.” 

“But, my dear, I will bring her up to you, if it is your 
wish to see her.” 

“It is becoming imperative that I should.” 

“No hurry, no hurry: wait till the end of next week. 
And I must see Dartrey, on business, at once! ” 

She gave the address in a neighbouring square. He had 


MRS. MARSETT 


277 


minutes to spare before dinner, and flew. She was not 
inquisitive. 

Colney Durance had told Dartrey, that Victor was kill- 
ing her. She had little animation ; her smiles were ready, 
but faint. After her interview with Dudley, there had 
been a swoon at home; and her maid, sworn to secrecy, 
willingly spared a tender-hearted husband — so good a 
master. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

MRS. MARSETT 

Little acts of kindness were not beyond the range of 
Colney Durance, and he ran down to Brighton, to give 
the exiled Xesta some taste of her friendly London circle. 
The Duvidney ladies knew that the dreaded gentleman had 
a regard for the girl. Their own, which was becoming 
warmer than they liked to think, was impressed by his 
manner of conversing with her. ‘‘Child though she was,’^ 
he paid her the compliment of a sober as well as a satirical 
review of the day’s political matter and recent publica- 
tions; and the ladies were introduced, in a wonderment, to 
the damsel Delphica. They listened placidly to a dis- 
course upon her performances, Japanese to their under- 
standings. 

At Xew York, behold, another adventurous represen- 
tative and advocate of the European tongues has joined 
the party: Signor Jeridomani: a philologer, of course; a 
politician in addition; Macchiavelli redivivus, it seems 
to fair Delphica. The speech he delivers at the Syndicate 
Delmonico Dinner, is justly applauded by the Xew York 
Press as a masterpiece of astuteness. He appears to be 
the only one of the party“who has an eye for the dark. 
She fancies she may know a more widely awake in the 
abstract. But now, thanks to jubilant Journals and 
Homeric laughter over the Continent, the secret is out, in 
so far as the concurrents are all unmasked and exposed for 
the ediflcation of the American public. Dr. Bouthoin’s 


278 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


eyebrows are up, Mr. Semhians disfigures his name by 
greatly gaping. Shall they return to their Great Britain 
indignant? Patriotism, with the sauce of a luxurious 
expedition at no cost to the private purse, restrains them. 
Moreover, there is no signt)f any one of the others intend- 
ing to quit the expedition; and Mr. Semhians has done a 
marvel or two in the cricket-field: Old England looks up 
where she can. What is painfully extraordinary to our 
couple, they find in the frigid attitude of the Americans ' 
toward their “common tongue; ” together with the rumour 1 
of a design to despatch an American rival emissary to 
Japan. 

Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies 
could not have a doubt that she was interested and under- 
stood. She would have sketches of scenes between Del- 
phica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania ^ 
was cleverly ingenuous indeed — a seminary Celimene; and j 
between Delphica and M. Mytharete, with whom she was 
archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean of Homer. Dr. Gan- 
nius holds a trump card in his artless daughter, conjectur- 
ally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals 
in the far East. He has now a suspicion, that the inven- 
tive M. Falarique, melted down to sobriety by misfortune, 
may some day startle their camp by the cast of more than 
a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing alliances; 
frightens the supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity; 
eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or 
modifies, his dictum upon the English, that, “mascuJine 
brawn they have in their bodies, but muscle they have not : 
in their feminine minds;” to exalt them, for a signally 
clean, if a dense, people : 

“Amousia, not Alousia, is their enemy.” — How, when 
we have the noblest crop of poets? — “You have never 
lieartily embraced those aliens among you until you learnt 
from us, that you might brag of them.” — Have they not 
endowed us with the richest of languages ? — “The words 
of which are used by you, as old slippers, for puns.” Mr. 
Semhians has been superciliously and ineffectively pun- 
ning in foreign presences: he and his chief are inwardly 
shocked by a new perception; — What if, now that we 
have the populace for paymaster, subservience to the lit- 


MBS. MARSETT 


2f9 

erary tastes of the populace should reduce the nation to its 
lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to com- 
pete with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although 
so proudly paid at home! Is it not thus that nations are 
seen of the Highest to be devouring themselves ? 

“For,” says Dr. Gannius, as if divining them, “this 
excessive and applauded productiveness, both of your 
juvenile and your senile, in your modern literature, is it 
ever a crop ?- Is it even the restorative perishable stuff of 
the markets ? Is it not rather your street-pavement’s 
patter of raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruit- 
ful ? ” Mr. Semhians appeals to Delphica. “ Genius you 
have,” says she, stiffening his neck-band, “genius in super- 
abundance:” — he throttles to the complexion of the 
peony: — “perhaps criticism is wanting.” Dr. Gannius 
adds: “Perhaps it is the drill-sergeant everywhere want- 
ing for an unrivalled splendid rabble 1 ” 

Golney left the whole body of concurrents on the raised 
flooring of a famous New York Hall, clearly entrapped, 
and incited to debate before an enormous audience, as to 
the merits of their respective languages. “I hear,” says 
Dr. Bouthoin to Mr. Semhians (whose gape is daily extend- 
ing), “that the tickets cost ten dollars! ” 

There was not enough of Delphica for Nesta. 

Golney asked : “ Have you seen any of our band ? ” 

“No,” she said, with good cheer, and became thoughtful, 
conscious of a funny reason for the wish to hear of the 
fictitious creature disliked by Dudley. A funny and a 
naughty reason, was it ? Not so very naughty: but it was 
funny; for it was a spirit of opposition to Dudley, with- 
out an inferior feeling at all, such as girls should have. 

Golney brought his viola for a duet; they had a pleasant 
musical evening, as in old days at Greckholt; and Nesta, 
going upstairs with the ladies to bed, made them share 
her father’s amused view of the lamb of the flock this 
bitter gentleman became when he had the melodious in- 
strument tucked under his chin. He was a guest for the 
night. Dressing in the early hour, Nesta saw him from 
her window on the parade, and soon joined him, to hear 
him at his bitterest, in the flush of the brine. “ These 
lengths of blank-faced terraces fronting sea ! ” were the 


280 


ONE OF OIJB CONQUERORS 


satirist’s present black beast. So these moneyed English 
shoulder to the front place; and that is the appearance 
they offer to their commercial God ! ” He gazed along 
the miles of ‘‘English countenance,” drearily laughing. 
Changeful ocean seemed to laugh at the spectacle. Some 
Orphic joke inspired his exclamation: “Capital! ” 

“Come where the shops are,” said Nesta. 

“ And how many thousand parsons have you here ? ” 

“Ten, I think,” she answered in his vein, and warmed 
h im ; leading him contemplatively to scrutinize her admirers : 
the Rev. Septimus; Mr. Sowerby. 

“News of our friend of the whimpering flute?” 

“ Here ? no. I have to understand you ! ” 

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the “ regiments 
of Anglo-Chinese ” represented to him by the moneyed 
terraces, and said : “ The face of a stopped watch 1 — the 
only meaning it has is past date.” 

He had no liking for Dudley Sowerby. But it might 
have been an allusion to the general view of the houses. 
But again, “ the meaning of it past date,” stuck in her 
memory. A certain face close on handsome, had a fatal 
susceptibility to caricature. 

She spoke of her “ exile ” : wanted Skepsey to come down 
to her; moaned over the loss of her Louise. The puzzle 
of the reason for the long separation from her parents, was 
evident in her mind, and unmentioned. 

They turned on to the pier. 

Nesta reminded him of certain verses he had written to 
celebrate her visit to the place when she was a child: 




I 


^ And then along the pier we sped, 
And there we saw a Whale : 

He seemed to have a Normous Head, 
And not a hit oj Tail! ’ 


“ Manifestly a foreigner to our shores, where the exactly 
inverse condition rules,” Colney said. 


^ And then we scampered on the beach, 
To chase the foaming loave ; 

And when we ran beyond its reach 
We all became more brave. ^ ’’ 


MES. MAESETT 


281 


Colney remarked: was a poet — for once.^’ 

A neat-legged Parisianly-booted lady, having the sea- 
winds very enterprising with her dark wavy locks and 
jacket and skirts, gave a cry of pleasure and a silvery 
“You dear ! ” at sight of Nesta; then at sight of one of us, 
moderated her tone to a propriety equalling the most con- 
ventional. “ We ride to-day ? ” 

“I shall be one,” said Nesta. 

“It would not be the commonest pleasure to me, if you 
were absent.” 

“ Till eleven, then ! ” 

“After my morning letter to Ned.” 

She sprinkled silvery sound on that name or on the 
adieu, blushed, blinked, frowned, sweetened her lip-lines, 
bit at the under one, and passed in a discomposure. 

“ The lady ? ” Colney asked. 

“ She is — I meet her in the troop conducted by the 
riding-master: Mrs. Marsett.” 

“And who is Ned ?” 

“ It is her husband, to whom she writes every morning. 
He is a captain in the army, or was. He is in Norway, 
fishing.” 

“ Then the probability is, that the English officer con- 
tinues his military studies.” 

“Do you not think her handsome, Mr. Durance ?” 

“Ned may boast of his possession, when he has trimmed 
it and toned it a little.” 

“She is different, if you are alone with her.” 

“It is not unusual,” said Colney. 

At eleven o’clock he was in London, and Nesta rode be- 
side Mrs. Marsett amid the troop. 

A South-easterly wind blew the waters to shifty goldleaf 
prints of brilliance under the sun. 

“I took a liberty this morning, I called you ‘ Dear ’ this 
morning,” the lady said. “It ’s what I feel, only I have 
no right to blurt out everything I feel, and I was ashamed. 
I am sure I must have appeared ridiculous. I got quite 
nervous.” 

“You would not be ridiculous to me.” 

“I remember I spoke of Ned.” 

“You have spoken of him before.” 


282 


ONE OF OUE. CONQUEEOES 


I know: to you alone. I should like to pluck 
out my heart and pitch it on the waves, to see whether it 
would sink or swim. That’s a funny idea, isn’t it! I 
tell you everything that comes up. What shall I do when 
I lose you! You always make me feel you’ve a lot of 
poetry ready-made in you.” 

“We will write. And you will have your husband 
then.” 

“When I had finished my letter to Ned, I dropped my 
head on it and behaved like a fool for several minutes. I 
can’t bear the thought of losing you! ” 

“But you don’t lose me,” said Nesta; “there is no 
ground for your supposing that you will. And your wish 
not to lose me, binds me to you more closely.” 

“If you knew!” Mrs. Marsett caught at her slippery 
tongue, and she carolled : “ If we all knew everything, we 
should be wiser, and what a naked lot of people we 
should be ! ” 

They were crossing the passage of a cavalcade of gentle- 
men, at the end of the East Cliff. One among them, large 
and dominant, with a playful voice of brass, cried out: 
“And how do you do, Mrs. Judith Marsett — ha? Beau- 
tiful morning ? ” 

Mrs. Marsett’s figure tightened ; she rode stonily erect, 
looked level ahead. Her woman’s red mouth was shut fast 
on a fighting underlip. 

“He did not salute you,” Nesta remarked, to justify 
her for not having responded. 

The lady breathed a low thunder: “Coward! ” 

“He cannot have intended to insult you,” said Nesta. 

“That man knows I will not notice him. He is a beast. 
He will learn that I carry a horsewhip.” 

“Are you not taking a little incident too much to heart ? ” 

The sigh of the heavily laden came from Mrs. Marsett: 
“ Am I pale ? I dare say. I shall go on my knees to-night 
hating myself that I was born ‘ one of the frail sex.’ We 
are, or we should ride at the coward and strike him to the 
ground. Pray, pray do not look distressed! Now you 
know my Christian name. That dog of a man barks it out 
on the roads. It does n’t matter.” 

“ He has offended you before ? ” 


MBS. MABSETT 


283 


You are near me. They can’t hurt me, can’t touch me, 
when I think that I ’m talking with you. How I envy 
those who call you by your Christian name.” 

‘‘Hesta,” said smiling ISTesta. The smile was forced, 
that she might show kindness, for the lady was jarring on 
her. 

Mrs. Marsett opened her lips: ^^Oh, my God, I shall be 
crying! — let ’s gallop. ISTo, wait, I ’ll tell you. I wish I 
could! I will tell you of that man. That man is Major 
Worrell. One of the majors who manage to get to their 
grade. A retired warrior. He married a handsome woman, 
above him in rank, with money; a good woman. She 
was a good woman, or she would have had her vengeance, 
and there was never a word against her. She must have 
loved that — Ned calls him, full-blooded ox. He spent 
her money and he deceived her. — You innocent! Oh, 
you dear! I ’d give the world to have your eyes. I ’ve 
heard tell of ‘ crystal clear, ’ but eyes like yours have to 
tell me how deep and clear. Such a world for them to 
be in ! I did pray, and used your name last night on my 
knees, that you — I said Nesta — might never have to go 
through other women’s miseries. Ah me! I have to tell 
you he deceived her. You don’t quite understand.” 

' do understand,” said Nesta. 

‘‘ God help you — I am excited to-day. That man is 
poison to me. His wife forgave him three times. On 
three occasions, that unhappy woman forgave him. He is 
great at his oaths, and a big breaker of them. She walked 
out one November afternoon and met him riding along 
with a notorious creature. You know there are bad 
women. They passed her, laughing. And look there, 
Nesta, see that groyne; that very one.” Mrs. Marsett 
pointed her whip hard out. “The poor lady went down 
from tlie height here; she walked into that rough water 
— look ! — steadying herself along it, and she plunged ; she 
never came out alive. A week after her burial, Major 
Worrell — ■ I ’ve told you enough.” 

“We ’ll gallop now,” said Nesta. 

Mrs. Marsett’s talk, her presence hardly less, affected 
the girl with those intimations of tumult shown upon 
smooth waters when the great elements are conspiring. 


284 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOKS 


She felt that there was a cause why she had to pity, did 
pity her. It might be, that Captain Marsett wedded one 
who was of inferior station, and his wife had to bear blows 
from cruel people. The supposition seemed probable. 
The girl accepted it ; for beyond it, as the gathering of the 
gale masked by hills, lay a brewing silence. What ? She 
did not reflect. Her quick physical sensibility curled to 
some breath of heated atmosphere brought about her by 
this new acquaintance : not pleasant, if she had thought of , 
pleasure : intensely suggestive of our life at the consuming 
tragic core, round which the furnace pants. But she was 
unreflecting, feeling only a beyond and hidden. 

Besides, she was an exile. Spelling at dark things in 
the dark, getting to have the sight which peruses darkness, 
she touched the door of a mystery that denied her its key, 
but showed the lock; and her life was beginning to know 
of hours that fretted her to recklessness. Her friend 
Louise was absent: she had so few friends — owing to that 
unsolved reason : she wanted one, of any kind, if only 
gentle: and this lady seemed to need her: and she flat- 
tered; Nesta was in the mood for swallowing and digesting 
and making sweet blood of flattery. | 

At one time, she liked Mrs. Marsett best absent: in 
musing on her, wishing her well, having said the adieu. ^ 
For it was wearisome to hear praises of innocence ; and 
women can do so little to cure that “wickedness of men,’’ - 
among the lady’s conversational themes; and “love” too: , 
it may be a “plague,” and it may be “heaven : ” it is better j 
left unspoken of. But there were times when Mrs. Mar- . 
sett’s looks and tones touched compassion to press her I 
hand : an act that had a pledgeing signification in the girl’s V 
bosom : and when, by the simple avoidance of ejaculatory i 
fervours, Mrs. Marsett’s quieted good looks had a shadow | 
of a tender charm, more pathetic than her outcries were. | 
These had not always the sanction of polite usage: and | 
her English was guilty of sudden lapses to the Thames- I 
water English of commerce and drainage instead of the 1 
upper wells. But there are many uneducated ladies in I 
the land. Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature 
betray now and then by peeps a similarity to Nesta’s maid 
Mary’s. Mrs. Marsett liked love, blood, and adventure. 


MRS. MARSETt 


285 


She had, moreover, a favourite noble poet, and she begged 
IS'esta’s pardon for naming him, and she would not name 
him, and told her she must not read him until she was a 
married woman, because he did mischief to girls. There- 
upon she fell into one of her silences, emerging with a 
cry of hate of herself for having ever read him. She did 
not blame the bard. And, ah, poor bard! he fought his 
battle : he shall not be named for the brand on the name. 
He has lit a sulphur match for the lower of nature through 
many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad frail souls 
who could accuse him of pipeing devil’s agent to them at 
the perilous instant — poor girls too 1 — is chastisement 
enough. This it is to be the author of unholy sweets : a 
Posterity sitting in judgement will grant, that they were 
part of his honest battle with the hypocrite English Philis- 
tine, without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty 
swallower of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed 
aloud her gladness of escape in never having met a man 
like him ; followed by her regret that Ned ” was so utterly 
unlike; except “perhaps ” — and she hummed; she was off 
on the fraternity in wickedness. 

Nesta’s ears were fatigued. “My mother writes of 
you,’’ she said, to vary the subject. 

Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: “T have 
had my dream of a friend ! — It was that gentleman with 
you on the pier ! Your mother objects ? ” 

“She has inquired, nothing more.” 

am not twenty -three : not as old as I should be, for a 
guide to you. I know I would never do you harm. That 
I know. I would walk into that water first, and take Mrs. 
Worrell’s plunge: — the last bath; a thorough cleanser for 
a woman! Only, she was a good woman and did n’t want 
it, as we — as lots of us do: — to wash off all recollection 
of having met a man ! Your mother would not like me to 
call you Nesta! I have never begged you to call me 
Judith. Damnable name!” Mrs. Marsett revelled in the 
heat of the curse on it, as a relief to tortur6 of the breast, 
until a sense of the girl’s alarmed hearing sent the word 
reverberating along her nerves and shocked her with such 
an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady’s lips. She 
murmured: “Porgive me,” and had the passion to repeat 


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the epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a g 
hatefuller; but the twitch of Nesta’s brows made her say; 
“Do pardon me. I did something in Scripture. Judith 
could again. Since that brute Worrell crossed me riding ;] 
with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things. I have 
offended you.” | 

“We have been taught differently. I do not use those I 
words. Nothing else.” -u 

“They frighten you.” ^ 

‘'They make me shut; that is all.” 

“ Supposing you were some day to discover . . . ta-ta-ta, j 
all the things there are in the world.” Mrs. Marsett let 
fly an artificial chirrup. “You must have some ideas of \ 
me.” f 

“I think you have had unhappy experiences.” 

“Nesta . . . just now and then! the first time. we rode 
out together, coming back from the downs, I remember, I 
spoke, without thinking — I was enraged — of a case in the 
newspapers ; and you had seen it, and you were not afraid 
to talk of it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl, she ’s 
bold ! I thought you knew more than a girl ought to 
know: until — you did — you set my heart going. You 
spoke of the poor women like an angel of compassion. You 
said, we were all mixed up with their fate — I forget the 
words. But no one ever heard in Church anything that 
touched me so. I worshipped you. You said, you thought j 
of them often, and longed to find out what you could do 
to help. And I thought, if they could hear you, and only i 
come near you, as I was — ah, my heaven ! — Unhappy 
experiences ? Yes. But when men get women on the 
slope to their perdition, they have no mercy, none. They 
deceive, and they lie; they are false in acts and words; 
they do as much as murder. They Ye never hanged for it. 
They make the Laws ! And then they become fathers of 
families, and point the finger at the ‘ wretched creatures.^ 
They have a dozen names against women, for one at 
themselves.” 

“It maddens me at times to think! . . .” said Nesta, 
burning with the sting of vile names. 

“ Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men : but men 
have the power and the lead, and they take advantage of 


MBS. MABSETT 287 

it; and then they turn round and execrate us for not hav- 
ing what they have robbed us of ! 

“I blame women — if I may dare, at my age,” said 
Nesta, and her bosom heaved. Women should feel for 
their sex; they should not allow the names; they should 
go among their unhappier sisters. At the worst, they are 
sisters ! I am sure, that fallen cannot mean — Christ 
shows it does not. He changes the tone of Scripture. The 
women who are made outcasts, must be hopeless and go to 
utter ruin. We should, if we pretend to be better, step 
between them and that. There cannot be any goodness 
unless it is a practiced goodness. Otherwise it is nothing 
more than paint on canvas. You speak to me of my inno- 
cence. What is it worth, if it is only a picture and does 
no work to help to rescue ? I fear I think most of the 
dreadful names that redden and sicken us. — The Old 
Testament! — I have a French friend, a Mademoiselle 
Louise de Seilles — you should hear her : she is intensely 
French, and a Eoman Catholic, everything which we are 
not : but so human , so wise, and so full of the pride of her 
sex ! I love her. It is love. She will never marry until 
she meets a man who has the respect for women, for all 
women. We both think we cannot separate ourselves from 
our sisters. She seems to me to wither men, when she 
speaks of their injustice, their snares to mislead and their 
cruelty when they have succeeded. She is right, it is the 
— brute: there is no other word.” 

“And French and good!” Mrs. Marsett ejaculated. 
“My Ned reads French novels, and he says, their wo- 
men . . . But your mademoiselle is a real one. If she 
says all that, I could kneel to her, French or not. Does 
she talk much about men and women ? ” 

“Not often: we lose our tempers. She wants women to 
have professions ; at present they have not much choice to 
avoid being penniless. Poverty, and the sight of luxury! 
It seems as if we produced the situation, to create an 
envious thirst, and cause the misery. Things are improv- 
ing for them; but we groan at the slowness of it.” 

Mrs. Marsett now declared a belief that women were 
nearly quite as bad as' men. “ I don’t think I could take up 
with a profession. Unless to be a singer. Ah! Do you sing ?” 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Nesta smiled: “Yes, I sing.’^ 

“How I should like to hear you! My Ned’s a thorough 
Englishman — gentleman, you know : he cares only for 
sport; Shooting, Fishing, Hunting; and Football, Cricket, 
Rowing, and matches. He ’s immensely proud of England 
in those things. And such muscle he has! — though he 
begins to fancy his heart ’s rather weak. It ’s digestion, I 
tell him. But he takes me to the Opera sometimes — 
Italian Opera; he can’t stand German. Down at his place 
in Leicestershire, he tells me, when there ’s company, he 
has — I’m sure you sing beautifully. When I hear beau- 
tiful singing, even from a woman they tell tales of, upon 
my word, it’s true, I feel my sins all melting out of me 
and I ’m new-made: I can’t bear Ned to speak. Would 
you one day, one afternoon, before the end of next week ? 

— it would do me such real good, you can’t guess how 
much; if I could persuade you! I know I ’m asking some- 
thing out of rules. For just half an hour! I judge by 
your voice in talking. Oh ! it would do me good — good 

— good to hear you sing. There is a tuned piano — a 
cottage; I don’t think it sounds badly. You would not 
see any great harm in calling on me ? — once ! ” 

“No,” said Nesta. And it was her nature that projected 
the word. Her awakened wits were travelling to her from 
a distance, and she had an intimation of their tidings; and 
she could not have said what they were; or why, for a 
moment, she hesitated to promise she would come. Her 
vision of the reality of things was without written titles, 
to put the stamp of the world on it. She felt this lady to 
be one encompassed and in the hug of the elementary forces, 
which are the terrors to inexperienced pure young women. 
But she looked at her, and dared trust those lips, those 
eyes. She saw, through whatever might be the vessel, the 
spirit of the woman; as the upper nobility of our brood are 
enabled to do in a crisis mixed of moral aversion and sis- 
terly sympathy, when nature cries to them, and the scales 
of convention, the mud-spots of accident, even naughtiness, 
even wickedness, all misfortune’s issue, if we but see the 
one look upward, fall away. Reason is not excluded from 
these blind throbs of a blood that strikes to right the doings 
of the Fates. Nesta did not err in her divination of the 


ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WORLD 289 


good and the bad incarnate beside her, though both good 
and bad were behind a curtain; the latter sparing her 
delicate senses, appealing to chivalry, to the simply femi- 
nine claim on her. Reason, acting in her heart as a tongue 
of the flames of the forge where we all are wrought, told 
her surely that the good predominated. She had the heart 
which is at our primal fires when nature speaks. 

She gave the promise to call on Mrs. Marsett and sing 
to her. 

An afternoon ? Oh ! what afternoon ? ” she was asked, 
and she said: ‘‘This afternoon, if you like.” 

So it was agreed: Mrs. Marsett acted violently the thrill 
of delight she felt in the prospect. 

The ladies Dorothea and Virginia consulted, and pro- 
nounced the name of Marsett to be a reputable County 
name. “There was a Leicestershire baronet of the name 
of Marsett.” They arranged to send their button-blazing 
boy at Nesta^s heels. Mrs. Marsett resided in a side-street 
not very distant from the featureless but washed and 
orderly terrace of the glassy stare at sea. 


CHAPTER XXIX 

SHOWS ONE OF THE SHADOWS OP THE WORLD CROSSING 

A virgin’s mind 

Xesta and her maid were brought back safely through 
the dusk by their constellation of a boy, to whom the 
provident ladies had entrusted her. They could not but 
note how short her syllables were. Her face was only 
partly seen. They had returned refreshed from their 
drive on the populous and orderly parade — so fair a pat- 
tern of their England ! — after discoursing of “the dear 
child,” approving her manners, instancing proofs of her 
intelligence, nay, her possession of “character.” They 
did so, notwithstanding that these admissions were worse 
than their growing love for the girl, to confound estab- 
lished ideas. And now, in thoughtfulness on her behalf, 

19 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Dorothea said, We have considered, Nesta, that you may 
be lonely ; and if it is your wish, we will leave our card on 
your new acquaintance.” Nesta took her hand and kissed 
it; she declined, saying, ^^No,” without voice. 

They had two surprises at the dinner-hour. One was 
the card of Dartrey Fenellan, naming an early time next 
day for his visit; and the other was the appearance of the 
Rev, Stuart Eem, a welcome guest. He had come to meet 
his Bishop. 

He had come also with serious information for the 
ladies, regarding the Rev. Abram Posterley. No sooner 
was this out of his mouth than both ladies exclaimed: 
‘‘Again ! ” So serious was it, that there had been a con- 
sultation at the Wells; Mr. Posterley ^s friend, the Rev. 
Septimus Barmby, and his own friend, the Rev. Grose- 
man Buttermore, had journeyed from London to sit upon 
the case: and, “One hoped,” Mr. Stuart Rem said, “poor 
Posterley would be restored to the senses he periodically 
abandoned.” He laid a hand on Tasso’s curls, and with- 
drew it at a menace of teeth. Tasso would submit to 
rough caresses from Mr. Posterley; he would not allow 
Mr. Stuart Rem to touch him. Why was that? Perhaps 
for the reason of Mr. Posterley’s being so emotional as 
perpetually to fall a victim to some bright glance and 
require the rescue of his friends ; the slave of woman had 
a magnet for animals ! 

Dorothea and Virginia were drawn to compassionate sen- 
timents, in spite of the provokeing recurrence of Mr. 
Posterley ’s malady. He had not an income to support 
a wife. Always was this unfortunate gentleman entan- 
gling himself in a passion for maid or widow of the Wells: 
and it was desperate, a fever. Mr. Stuart Rem charitably 
remarked on his taking it so severely because of his very 
scrupulous good conduct. They pardoned a little wound 
to their delicacy, and asked : “ On this occasion ? ” Mr. 
Stuart Rem named a linendraper’s establishment near the 
pantiles, where a fair young woman served. “And her 
reputation ? ” That was an article less presentable 
through plate-glass, it seemed: Mr. Stuart Rem drew a 
prolonged breath into his nose. 

“ It is most melancholy ! ” they said in unison. “ Nothing 


OKE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WOIiLD 291 

positive/’ said he. But the suspicion of a shadow, Mr. 
Stuart Bern ! You will not permit it ? ” He stated, that 
his friend Buttermore might have influence. Dorothea said : 

When I think of Mr. Posterley’s addiction to ceremonial 
observances, and to matrimony, I cannot but think of a 
sentence that fell from Mr. Durance one day, with reference 
to that division of our Church : he called it ; — you frown ! 
and I would only quote Mr. Durance to you in support of 
your purer form, as we hold it to be : — with the candles, the 
vestments. Confession, alas ! he called it, ‘ Borne and a 
wife.’ ” 

Mr. Stuart Bern nodded an enforced assent : he testily 
dismissed mention of Mr. Durance, and resumed on Mr. 
Posterley. 

The good ladies now, with some of their curiosity ap- 
peased, considerately signifled to him, that a young maiden 
was present. 

The young maiden had in heart stuff to render such small 
gossip a hum of summer midges. She did not imagine the 
dialogue concerned her in any way. She noticed Mr. Stuart 
Bern’s attentive scrutiny of her from time to time. She 
had no sensitiveness, hardly a mind for things about her. 
To-morrow she was to see Captain Dartrey. She dwelt on 
that prospect, for an escape from the meshes of a painful 
hour — the most woeful of the hours she had yet known — 
passed with Judith Marsett ; which dragged her soul through 
a weltering of the deeps, tossed her over and over, still did 
it with her ideas. It shocked her nevertheless to perceive 
how much of the world’s flayed life and harsh anatomy she 
had apprehended, and so coldly, previous to Mrs. Marsett’s 
lift of the veil in her story of herself : a skipping revelation, 
terrible enough to the girl ; whose comparison of the 
previously suspected things with the things now revealed 
imposed the thought of her having been both a precocious 
and a callous young woman: a kind of ^^Delphica without 
the erudition,” her mind phrased it airily over her chagrin. 
— And the silence of Dudley proved him to have discovered 
his error in choosing such a person: he was wise, and she 
thanked him. She had an envy of the ignorant-innocents 
adored by the young man she cordially thanked for quitbing 
her. She admired the white coat of armour they wore, 


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ONE OF OUJi CONQtJERORS 


whether bestowed on them by their constitution or by 
prudence. For while combating mankind now on Judith 
Marsett’s behalf, personally she ran like a hare from the 
mere breath of an association with the very minor sort of 
similar charges ; ardently she desired the esteem of mankind ; 
she was at moments abject. But liad she actually been 
aware of the facts now known ? 

Those wits of the virgin young, quickened to shrewdness 
by their budding senses — and however vividly — require 
enlightenment of the audible and visible before their sterner 
feelings can be heated to break them away from a blushful 
dread and force the mind to know. As much as the wilfully 
or naturally blunted, the intelligently honest have to learn 
by touch : only, their understandings cannot meanwhile be so 
wholly obtuse as our society’s matron, acting to please the 
tastes of the civilized man — a creature that is not clean- 
washed of the Turk in him — barbarously exacts. The signor 
aforesaid is puzzled to read the woman, who is after all in 
his language; but when* it comes to reading the maiden, she 
appears as a phosphorescent hieroglyph to some speculative 
Egyptologer ; and he insists upon distinct lines and char- 
acters ; no variations, if he is to have sense of surety. 
Many a young girl is misread by the amount she seems to 
know of our construction, history, and dealings, when it is 
not more than her sincere ripeness of nature, that has 
gathered the facts of life profuse about her, and prompts 
her through one or other of the instincts, often vanity, to 
show them to be not entirely strange to her ; or haply her 
filly nature is having a fling at the social harness of hypoc- 
risy. If you (it is usually through the length of ears of 
your Novelist that the privilege is yours) have overheard 
queer communications passing between girls — and you must 
act the traitor eavesdropper or Achilles masquerader to over- 
hear so clearly — these, be assured, are not specially the 
signs of their corruptness. Even the exceptionally cynical 
are chiefly to be accused of bad manners. Your Moralist is 
a myopic preacher, when he stamps infamy on them, or on 
our later generation, for the kick they have at grandmother 
decorum, because you do not or cannot conceal from them 
the grinning skeleton behind it. 

Nesta once had dreams of her being loved : and she was 


ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WOELD 293 


to love in return for a love that excused her for loving double, 
treble ; as not her lover could love, she thought with grate- 
ful pride in the treasure she was to pour out at his feet ; as 
only one or two (and they were women) in the world had 
ever loved. Her notion of the passion was parasitic : man 
the tree, woman the bine ; but the bine was flame to enwind 
and to soar, serpent to defend, immortal flowers to crown. 
The choice her parents had made for her in Dudley, behind 
the mystery she had scent of, nipped her dream, and pre- 
pared her to meet, as it were, the fireside of a November day 
instead of springing up and into the dawn’s blue of full sum- 
mer with swallows on wing. Her station in exile at the 
Wells of the weariful rich, under the weight of the sullen 
secret, unenlivened by Dudley’s courtship, subdued her to 
the world’s decrees; phrased thus: I am not to be a 
heroine.” The one golden edge to the view was, that she 
would greatly please her father. 

Her dream of a love was put away like a botanist’s pressed 
weed. But after hearing Judith Marsett’s wild sobs, it had 
no place in her cherishing. Dor, above all, the unhappy 
woman protested love to have been the cause of her misery. 
She moaned of her Ned ; ” of his goodness, his deceitful- 
ness, her trustfulness ; his pride and the vileness of his 
friends ; her longsuffering and her break down of patience. 
It was done for the proof of her unworthiness of Nesta’s 
friendship: that she might be renounced, and embraced. 
She told the pathetic half of her story, to suit the gentle 
ear, whose critical keenness was lost in compassion. How 
deep the compassion, mixed with the girl’s native respect 
for the evil-fortuned, may be judged by her inaccessibility 
to a vulgar tang that she was aware of in the deluge of the 
torrent, where Innocence and Ned and Love and a proud 
Family and that beast Worrell rolled together in leaping 
and shifting involutions. 

A darkness of thunder was on the girl. Although she 
was not one to shrink beneath it like the small bird of the 
woods, she had to say within herself many times, I shall 
see Captain Dartrey to-morrow,” for a recovery and a 
nerving. And with her thought of him, her tooth was at 
her underlip, she struggled abashed, in hesitation over 
men’s views of her sex, and how to bring a frank mind to 


294 


ONE OF OJm CONQTJEBORS 


meet him ; to be sure of his not at heart despising; until 
his character swam defined and bright across her scope. 
^^He is good to women.’’ Fragments of conversation, 
principally her father’s, had pictured Captain Dartrey to 
her most manfully tolerant toward a frivolous wife. 

He came early in the morning, instantly after breakfast. 

Not two minutes had passed before she was at home 
with him. His words, his looks, revived her spirit of 
romance, gave her the very landscapes, and new ones. 
Yes, he was her hero. But his manner made him also an 
adored big brother, stamped splendid by the perils of life. 
He sat square, as if alert to rise, with an elbow on a knee, 
and the readiest turn of head to speakers, the promptest of 
answers, eyes that were a brighter accent to the mouth, so 
vividly did look accompany tone. He rallied her, chatted 
and laughed ; pleased the ladies by laughing at Colney 
Durance, and inspired her with happiness when he spoke 
of England : — that One has to be in exile awhile, to see 
the place she takes.” 

Oh, Captain Dartrey, I do like to hear you say so,” she 
cried ; his voice was reassuring also in other directions : it 
rang of true man. 

He volunteered, however, a sad admission, that England 
had certainly lost something of the great nation’s proper 
conception of Force : the meaning of it, virtue of it, and 
need for it. “ She bleats for a lesson, and will get her 
lesson.” 

Bub if we have Captain Dartrey, we shall come through ! 
So said the sparkle of Nesta’s eyes. 

She is very like her father,” he said to the ladies. 

^^We think so,” they remarked. 

^•There’s the mother too,” said he; and Nesta saw that 
the ladies shadowed. 

They retired. Then she begged him to tell her of her 
own dear mother.” The news gave comfort, except for 
the suspicion, that the dear mother was being worn by 
her entertaining so largely. ^^Papa is to blame,” said 
Nesta. 

momentary strain. Your father has an idea of 
Parliament; one of the London Boroughs.” 

And I, Captain Dartrey, when do I go back to them ? ” 


ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WOELD 295 

^ Your mother comes down to consult with you. And 
now, do we ride together ? 

You are free ? 

My uncle, Lord Clan, lets me out.^^ 

To-day ? 

Why, yes ! ” 

“This morning ? 

“ In an hour’s time.” 

“ I will be ready.” 

Nesta sent a line of excuse to Mrs. Marsett, throwing in 
a fervent adjective for balm. 

That fair person rode out with the troop under conduct 
of the hallowing squire of the stables, and passed by Kesta 
on horseback beside Dartrey Fenellan at the steps of a 
huge hotel ; issuing from which, pretty Mrs. Blathenoy was 
about to mount. Mrs. Marsett looked ahead and coloured, 
but she could not restrain one look at Nesta, that embraced 
her cavalier. Nesta waved hand to her, and nodded. Mrs. 
Marsett withdrew her eyes ; her doing so, silent though it 
was, resembled the drag back to sea of the shingle-wave 
below her, such a screaming of tattle she heard in the ques- 
tions discernible through the attitude of the cavalier and of 
the lady, who paused to stare, before the leap up in the 
saddle. ^ Who is she ? — what is she ? — how did you know 
her ? — where does she come from? — wears her hat on her 
brows ! — huge gauntlets out of style ! — shady ! shady ! 
shady ! ’ And as always during her nervous tumults, the 
name of Worrell made diapason of that execrable uproar. 
Her hat on her brows had an air of dash, defying a world it 
could win, as Ned well knew. But she scanned her gaunt- 
lets disapprovingly. This town, we are glad to think, has 
a bright repute for glove-shops. And Mrs. Marsett could 
applaud herself for sparing Ned’s money ; she had mended 
her gloves, if they were in the fashion. — But how does the 
money come ? IHark at that lady and that gentleman ques- 
tioning Miss Radnor of everything, everything in the world 
about her ! Not a word do they get from Miss Radnor. 
And it makes them the more inquisitive. Idle rich people, 
comfortably fenced round, are so inquisitive ! And Mrs. 
Marsett, loving Nesta for the notice of her, maddened by the 
sting of tongues it was causing, heard the wash of thi 


296 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEROKS 


beach, without consciousness of analogies, but with a body 
ready to jump out of skin, out of life, in desperation at the 
sound. 

She was all impulse ; a shifty piece of unmercenary strata- 
gem occasionally directing it. Arrived at her lodgings, she 
wrote to Nesta : I entreat you not to notice me, if you pass 
me on the road again. Let me drop, never mind how low 
I go. I was born to be wretched. A line from you, just a 
line now and then, only to show me I am not forgotten. I 
have had a beautiful dream. I am not bad in reality; I 
love goodness, I know. I cling to the thought of you, as 
my rescue, I declare. Please, let me hear: if it’s not more 
than ‘ good day ’ and your initials on a post-card.” 

The letter brought Nesta in person to her. 


CHAPTEK XXX 

THE BURDEN UPON NESTA 

Could there be confidences on the subject of Mrs. Mar- 
sett with Captain Dartrey ? — Xesta timidly questioned her 
heart : she knocked at an iron door shut upon a thing alive. 
The very asking froze her, almost to stopping her throbs of 
pity for the woman. With Captain Dartrey, if with any 
one ; but with no one. Xot with her mother even. Toward 
her mother, she felt guilty of knowing. Her mother had a 
horror of that curtain. Xesta had seen it, and had taken 
her impressions ; she, too, shrank from it ; the more when 
impelled to draw near it. Louise de Seilles would have 
been another self ; Louise was away ; when to return, the 
dear friend could not state. Speaking in her ear, would 
have been possible ; the theme precluded writing. 

It was ponderous combustible new knowledge of life for 
a girl to hold unaided. In the presence of the simple silvery 
ladies Dorothea and Virginia, she had qualms, as if she 
were breaking out in spots before them. The ladies fancied, 
that Mr. Stuart Kem had hinted to them oddly of the girl ; 
and that he might have meant, she appeared a little too 


THE BURDEN UPON NESTA 


297 


cognizant of poor Mr. Abram Posterley's malady — as girls, 
in these terrible days, only too frequently, too brazenly, are. 
They discoursed to her of the degeneracy of the manners, 
nay, the morals of young Englishwomen, once patterns ! 
They sketched the young English gentlewoman of their 
time ; indeed a beauty ; with round red cheeks, and rounded 
open eyes, and a demure shut mouth, a puppet’s divine 
ignorance; inoffensive in the highest degree, rightly wor- 
shipped. They were earnest, and Nesta struck at herself. 
She wished to be as they had been, reserving her painful 
independence. 

They were good : they were the ideal women of our 
country; which demands if it be but the semblance of the 
sureness of stationary excellence ; such as we have in Sevres 
and Dresden, polished bright and smooth as ever by the 
morning’s flick of a duster; perhaps in danger of accidents 
— accidents must be kept away ; but enviable, admirable, we 
think, when we are not thinking of seed sown or help given 
to the generations to follow. ISTesta both envied and ad- 
mired; she revered them ; yet her sharp intelligence, larger 
in the extended boundary of thought coming of strange 
crimson-lighted new knowledge, discerned in a dimness 
what blest conditions had fixed them on their beautiful 
barren eminence. Without challengeing it, she had a re- 
bellious rush of sympathy for our evil-fortuned of the 
world ; the creatures in the battle, the wounded, trodden, 
mud-stained : and it alarmed her lest she should be at heart 
one out of the fold. 

She had the sympathy, nevertheless, and renewing and 
increasing with the pulsations of a compassion that she 
took for her reflective survey. The next time she saw 
Dartrey Eenellan, she was assured of him, as being the 
man who might be spoken to ; and by a woman : though 
not by a girl ; not spoken to by her. The throb of the 
impulse precipitating speech subsided to a dumb yearning. 
He noticed her look : he was unaware of the human sun in 
the girl’s eyes taking an image of him for permanent habi- 
tation in her breast. That face of his, so clearly lined, 
quick, firm, with the blue smile on it like the gleam of a 
sword coming out of sheath, did not mean hardness, she 
could have vowed. 0 that some woman, other than the 


29^ ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 

unhappy woman herself, would speak the words denied to 
a girl ! He was the man who would hearken and help. 
Essential immediate help was to be given besides the noble 
benevolence of mind. Novel ideas of manliness and the 
world’s need for it were printed on her understanding. 
For what could women do in aid of a good cause ! She 
fawned : she deemed herself very despicably her hero’s 
inferior. The thought of him enclosed her. In a prison, 
the gaoler is a demi-God — hued bright or black, as it may 
be ; and, by the present arrangement between the sexes, she, 
whom the world allowed not to have an intimation from 
eye or ear, or from nature’s blood-ripeness in commune with 
them, of certain matters, which it suffers to be notorious, 
necessarily directed her appeal almost in worship to the 
man, who was the one man endowed to relieve, and who 
locked her mouth for shame. 

Thus wa« she, too, being put into her woman’s harness of 
the bit and the blinkers, and taught to know herself for the 
weak thing, the gentle parasite, which the fiction of our 
civilization expects her, caressingly and contemptuously, to 
become in the active, while it is exacted of her — 0 Comedy 
of Clowns ! — that in the passive she be a rock-fortress im- 
pregnable, not to speak of magically encircled. She must 
also have her feelings; she must not be an unnatural 
creature. And she must have a sufficient intelligence ; for 
her stupidity does not flatter the possessing man. It is not 
an organic growth that he desires in his mate, but a happy 
composition. You see the world which comes of the pair. 

This burning Nesta, Victor’s daughter, tempered by 
Nataly’s milder blood, was a girl in whom the hard shocks 
of the knowledge of life, perforce of the hardness upon pure 
metal, left a strengthening for generous imagination. She 
did not sit to brood on her injured senses or set them through 
speculation touching heat ; they were taken up and con- 
sumed by the fire of her mind. Nor had she leisure for the 
abhorrences, in a heart all flowing to give aid, and uplift and 
restore. Self was as urgent in her as in most of the young ; 
but the gift of humour, which had previously diverted it, 
was now the quick feeling for her sisterhood, through the 
one piteous example she knew ; and broadening it, through 
her insurgent abasement on their behalf, which was her 


THE BUKDEN UPON NESTA 


299 


scourged pride of sex. She but faintly thought of blaming 
the men whom her soul besought for justice, for common 
^^indness, to women. There was the danger, that her 
aroused young ignorance would charge the whole of the 
misery about and abroad upon the stronger of those two : 
and another danger, that the vision of the facts below the 
surface would discolour and disorder her views of existence. 
But she loved, she sprang to, the lighted world ; and she 
had figures of male friends, to which to cling; and they 
helped in animating glorious historical figures on the world’s 
library-shelves or under yet palpitating earth. Promise of 
a steady balance of her nature, too, was shown in the absence 
of any irritable urgency to be doing, when her bosom bled 
to help. Beyond the resolve, that she would not abandon 
the woman who had made confession to her, she formed no 
conscious resolutions. Far ahead down her journey of the 
years to come, she did see muified things she might hope 
and would strive to do. They were chrysalis shapes. 
Above all, she flew her blind quickened heart on the wings 
of an imaginative force ; and those of the young who can 
do that, are in their blood incorruptible by dark knowledge, 
irradiated under darkness in the mind. Let but the throb 
be kept for others. That is the one secret, for redemption, 
if not for preservation. 

Victor descended on his marine London to embrace his 
girl, full of regrets at Fredi’s absence from the great whirl 
‘‘overhead,” as places of multitudinous assembly, where he 
shone, always appeared to him. But it was not to last long; 
she would soon be on the surface again ! At the first clasp 
of her, he chirped some bars of her song. He challenged 
her to duet before the good ladies, and she kindled, she was 
caught up by his gaiety, wondering at herself ; faintly aware 
of her not being spontaneous. And she made her father 
laugh, just in the old way; and looked at herself in his 
laughter, with the thought that she could not have become 
so changed ; by which the girl was helped to jump to her 
humour. Victor turned his full front to Dorothea and Vir- 
ginia, one sunny beam of delight : and although it was Mr. 
Stuart Bern who was naughty ISTesta’s victim, and although 
it seemed a trespass on her part to speak in such a manner 
of a clerical gentleman, they were seized ; they were the 


300 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


i 


opposite partners of a laughing quadrille, lasting till they 
were tired out. 

Victor had asked his girl, if she sang on a Sunday. The 
ladies remembered, that she had put the question for per- 
mission to Mr. Stuart Eem, who was opposed to secular 
singing. 

And what did he say? ’’ said Victor. 

Nesta shook head: ‘^It was not what he said, papa ; it 
was his look. His duty compelled him, though he loves 
music. He had the look of a Patriarch putting his hand- 
maiden away into the desert.’’ 

Dorothea and Virginia, in spite of protests within, 
laughed to streams. They recollected the look; she had 
given the portrait of Mr. Stuart Rem in the act of repudiat- 
ing secular song. 

Victor conjured up a day when this darling Fredi, a child, 
stood before a famous picture in the Brera, at Milan : when 
he and her mother noticed the child’s very studious grave- 
ness; and they had talked of it; he remarking that she 
disapproved of the Patriarch; and IS'ataly, that she was 
taken with Hagar’s face. 

He seemed surprised at her not having heard from 
Dudley. 

How is that? ” said he. 

‘‘Most probably because he has not written, papa.” 

He paused after the cool reply. She had no mournful 
gaze at all ; but in the depths of the clear eyes he knew so 
well, there was a coil of something animate, whatever it 
might be. And twice she drew a heavy breath. 

He mentioned it in London. Nataly telegraphed at night 
for her girl to meet her next day at Dartrey’s hotel. 

Their meeting was incomprehensibly joyless to the hearts 
of each, though it was desired, and had long been desired, 
and mother was mother, daughter daughter, without dimi- 
nution of love between them. They held hands, they kissed 
and clasped, they showered their tender phrases with full 
warm truth, and looked into eyes and surely saw one another. 
But the heart of each was in a battle of its own, taking 
wounds or crying for supports. Whether to speak to her 
girl at once, despite the now vehement contrary counsel of 
Victor, was Nataly’s deliberation, under the thought of the 


THE BURDEN UPON NESTA 


801 


young creature’s perplexity in not seeing her at the house 
of the Duvidney ladies : while Kesta conjured in a flash the 
past impressions of her mother’s shrinking distaste from 
any such hectic themes as this which burdened and absorbed 
her ; and she was almost joining to it, through sympathy 
with any thought or feeling of one in whom she had such 
pride ; she had the shudder of revulsion. Further, Nataly 
]Dut on rather cravenly an air of distress, or she half design- 
ingly permitted her trouble to be seen, by way of affecting 
her girl’s recollection when the confession was to come, that 
Nesta might then understand her to have been restrained 
from speaking, not evasive of her duty. The look was inter- 
preted by Nesta as belonging to the social annoyances dating, 
in her calendar, from Creckholt, apprehensively dreaded at 
Lakelands. She hinted asking, and her mother nodded ; 
not untruthfully; but she put on a briskness after the nod; 
and a doubt was driven into Nesta’s bosom. 

Her dear Skepsey was coming down to her for a holiday, 
she was glad to hear. Of Dudley, there was no word. 
Nataly shunned his name, with a superstitious dread lest 
any mention of him should renew pretensions that she 
hoped, and now supposed, were quite withdrawn. So she 
had told poor Mr. Barmby only^ yesterday, at his humble 
request to know. He had seen Dudley on the pantiles, 
walking with a young lady, he said. And he feared,” he 
said; using a pardonable commonplace of deceit. Her 
compassion accounted for the fear ” which was the wish, 
and caused her not to think it particularly strange, that he 
should imagine Dudley to have quitted the field. Now that 
a disengaged Dartrey Fenellan was at hand, poor Mr. 
Barmby could have no chance. 

Dartrey came to her room by appointment. She wanted 
to see him alone, and he informed her, that Mrs. Blathenoy 
was' in the hotel, and would certainly receive and amuse 
Nesta for any length of time. 

will take her up,” said Nataly, and rose, and she sat 
immediately, and fluttered a hand at her breast. She 
laughed : Perhaps I ’m tired ! ” 

Dartrey took Nesta. 

He returned, saying : There ’s a lift in the hotel. D^o 
the stairs affect you at all ? ” 


802 


OISTE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


She fenced his sharp look. Laziness, I fancy ; age is 
coming on. How is it Mrs. Blathenoy is here ? ’’ 

^^Well! how?’’ 

‘‘ Foolish curiosity ? ” 

I think I have made her of service. I did not bring 
the lady here.” 

‘ ^ Of service to whom ? ” 
a Why, to Victor ! ” 

Has Victor commissioned you ? ” 

You can bear to hear it. Her husband knows the story. 
He has a grudge . . . commercial reasons. I fancy it is, 
that Victor stood against his paper at the table of the Bank. 
Blathenoy vowed blow for blow. But I think the little 
woman holds him in. She says she does.” 

Victor prompted you ? ” 

It occurred as it occurred.” 

She does it for love of us ? — Oh ! I can’t trifle. 
Dartrey ! ” 

‘^Tell me.” 

First you have n’t let me know what you think of my 
Nesta.” 

^^She ’s a dear good girl.” 

^^Not so interesting to you as a flighty little woman !” 

She has a speck of some sort on her mind.” 

Nataly spied at Diidle3^’s behaviour, and said: ‘‘That 
will wear away. Is Mr. Blathenoy much here ? ” 

“ As often as he can come, I believe.” 

“ That is ? . . .” 

“I have seen him twice.” 

“ His wife remains ? ” 

“ Fixed here for the season.” 

“ My friend ! ” 

“No harm, no h?vrm ! ” 

“ But — to her ! ” 

“You have my word of honour.” 

“ Yes : and she is doing }rou a service, at your request ; 
and you occasionally reward her with thanks ; and she sees 
you are a man of honour. Do you not know women ? ” 
Dartrey blew his pooh-pooh on feminine suspicions. 
“ There ’s very little left of the Don Amoroso in me. 
Women don’t worship stone figures.” 


THE BUEDEK UPON NESTA 303 

^^They do: like the sea>birds. And what do you say to 
me, Dartrey ? — I can confess it : I am one of them : 1 
love you. When last you left England, I kissed your hand. 
It was because of your manly heart in that stone figure. 
I kept from crying : you used to scorn us English for the 
‘ whimpering fits ’ you said we enjoy and must have — in 
books, if we can’t get them up for ourselves. I could have 
prayed to have you as brother or son. I love my Victor 
the better for his love of you. Oh ! — poor soul ! — how he 
is perverted since that building of Lakelands ! He cannot 
take soundings of the things he does. Formerly he con- 
fided in me, in all things: now not one; — I am the chief 
person to deceive. If only he had waited ! We are in a 
network of intrigues and schemes, every artifice, in London 
— tempting one to hate simple worthy people, who naturally 
have their views, and see me an impostor, and tolerate me, 
fascinated by him : — or bribed — it has to be said. There 
are ways of bribeing. I trust he may not have in the end 
to pay too heavily for succeeding. He seems a man pushed 
by Destiny ; not irresponsible, but less responsible than 
most. He is desperately tempted by his never failing. 
Whatever he does ! ... it is true ! And it sets me think- 
ing of those who have never had an ailment, up to a certain 
age, when the killing blow comes. Latterly I have seen 
into him: I never did before. Had I been stronger, I 
might have saved, or averted. . . . But, you will say, the 
stronger woman would not have occupied my place. I must 
have been blind too. I did not see, that his nature shrinks 
from the thing it calls up. He dreads^ the exposure he 
courts — or has to combat with all his powers. It has been 
a revelation to me of him — life as well. Nothing stops 
him. Now it is Parliament — a vacant London Borough. 
He counts on a death. Ah ! terrible ! I have it like a 
snake’s bite night and day.” 

Nataly concluded : There : it has done me some good to 
speak. I feel so base.” She breathed heavily. 

Dartrey took her hand and bent his lips to it. Happy 
the woman who has not more to speak ! How long will 
Nesta stay here ? ” 

^^You will watch over her, Dartrey? She stays — her 
father wishes — up to ... ah! We can hardly be in such 


304 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOES 


extreme peril. He has her doctor, her lawyer, and her 
butler — a favourite servant — to check, and influence, her. 
She — you know who it is ! — does not, I am now convinced, 
mean persecution. She was never a mean-minded woman. 
Oh! I could wish she were. They say she is going. Then 
I am to be made an ^honest woman ofV Victor wants 
Nesta, now that she is away, to stay until . . . You under- 
stand. He feels she is safe from any possible kind of harm 
with those good ladies. And I feel she is the safer for hav- 
ing you near. Otherwise, how I should pray to have you 
with us! Daily I have to pass through, well, something 
like the ordeal of the red-hot ploughshares — and without 
the innocence, dear friend ! But it ‘s best that my girl 
should not have to be doing the same ; though she would 
have the innocence. But she wu-ithes under any shadow 
of a blot. And for her to learn the things that are in the 
world, through her mother’s history ! — and led to know 
it by the falling away of friends, or say, acquaintances ! 
However ignorant at present, she learns from a mere 
nothing. I dread ! ... In a moment, she is a blaze of 
light. There have been occurrences. Only Victor could 
have overcome them ! I had to think it better for my girl, 
that she was absent. We are in such a whirl up there ! 
So I work round again to ^ how long ? ’ and the picture of 
myself counting the breaths of a dying woman. The other 
day I was told I was envied ! ” 

Battle, battle, battle ; — for all of us, in every position ! ” 
said Dartrey, sharply, to clip a softness : except when 
one ’s attending on an invalid uncle. Then it ’s peace ; 
rather like extinction. And I can’t be crying for the end 
either. I bite my moustache and tap foot on the floor, out 
of his hearing; make believe I’m patient. Now I’ll fetch 
Nesta.” 

Mrs. Blathenoy came down with an arm on Nesta’s 
shoulder. She held a telegram, and said to Nataly : ^^What 
can this mean ? It ’s from my husband; he puts ^ Jacob ; ’ 
my husband’s Christian name : — so like my husband, 
where there ’s no concealment ! There — he says : ‘ Down 
to-night else pack ready start to-morrow.’ Can it signify, 
affairs are bad with my husband in the city ? ” 

It had that signification to Nataly’s understanding. At 


THE BUEDEN UPON NESTA 


305 


the same time, the pretty little woman’s absurd lisping 
repetition of my husband ” did not seem without design 
to inflict the wound it caused. 

In reality, it was not malicious ; it came of the bewitch- 
ment of a silly tongue by her knowledge of the secret to be 
controlled : and after contrasting her fortunes with hlataly’s, 
on her way down-stairs, she had comforted herself by say- 
ing that at least she had a husband. She was not aware 
that she dealt a hurt until she had found a small consola- 
tion in the indulgence : for Captain Dartrey Fenellan 
admired this commanding flgure of a woman, who could 
not legally say that which the woman he admired less, if 
at all, legally could say. 

I must leave you to interpret,” Nataly remarked. 

Mrs. Blathenoy resented her unbefitting queenly style. 
For this reason, she abstained from an intended leading up 
to mention of the singular-looking lady ” seen riding with 
Miss Radnor more than once ; and as to whom. Miss Radnor 
(for one gives her the name) had not just now, when 
questioned, spoken very clearly. So the mother’s alarms 
were not raised. 

And really it was a pity, Mrs. Blathenoy said to Dartrey 
subsequently ; finding him colder than before Mrs. Radnor’s 
visit ; it was a pity, because a young woman in Miss Radnor’s 
position should not by any possibility be seen in association 
with a person of commonly doubtful appearance. 

She was denied the petulant satisfaction of rousing the 
championship bitter to her. Dartrey would not deliver an 
opinion on Miss Radnor’s conduct. He declined, moreover, 
to assist in elucidating the telegram by ^Cooking here,” and 
poring over the lines beside a bloomy cheek. He was petu- 
lantly whipped on the arm with her glove, and pouted at. 
And it was then — and then only or chiefly through Nataly’s 
recent allusion — that the man of honour had his quakings 
in view of the quagmire, where he was planted on an exceed- 
ingly narrow causeway, not of the firmest. For she was a 
pretty little woman, one of the prize gifts of the present 
education of women to the men who are for having them 
quiescent domestic patterns ; and her artificial ingenuousness 
or candid frivolities came to her by nature to kindle the 
nature of the gentleman on the other bank of the stream, 

20 


306 


OKE OF OUE CONQUEBORS 


and witch him to the plunge, so greatly mutually regretted 
after taken : an old duet to the moon. 

Dartrey escaped to the Club, where he had a friend. The 
friend was Colonel Sudley, one of the modern studious 
officers, not in good esteem with the authorities. He had 
not forgiven Dartrey for the intemperateness which cut off 
a brilliant soldier from the service. He was reduced to 
acknowledge, however, that there was a sparkling defence 
for him to reply with, in the shape of a fortune gained : and 
where we have a Society forcing us to live up to an expensive 
level, very trying to a soldier’s income, a fortune gained 
will offer excuses for misconduct short of disloyal or illegal. 
They talked of the state of the Army : we are moving. 
True, and at the last Review,, the march past ” was per- 
formed before a mounted generalissimo profoundly asleep, 
head on breast. Our English military moving ” may now 
be likened to Somnolency on Horseback. Oh, come, no 
rancour,” said the colonel ; you know he ’s a kind old boy 
at heart ; nowhere a more affectionate man alive ! ” 
i So the sycophants are sure of posts ! ” 

Come, I say! He ’s devoted to the Service.” 

Invalid him, and he shall have a good epitaph.” 

He ’s not so responsible as the taxpayer.” 

There you touch home. Mother Goose can’t imagine 
the need for defence until a hand’s at her feathers.” 

What about her shrieks now and then ? ” 

Indigestion of a surfeit ? ” 

They were in a laughing wrangle when two acquaintances 
of the colonel’s came near. One of them recognized Dartrey. 
He changed a prickly subject to one that is generally as 
acceptable to the servants of Mars. His companion said : 

Who is the girl out with Judith Marsett ? ” He flavoured 
eulogies of the girl’s good looks in easy garrison English. 
She was praised for sitting her horse well. One had met 
her on the parade, in the afternoon, walking with Mrs. 
Marsett. Colonel Sudley had seen them on horseback. He 
remarked to Dartrey : And by the way, you ’re a clean 
stretch ahead of us. I ’ve seen you go by these windows, 
with the young lady on one side, and a rather pretty woman 
on the other too.” 

^‘Nothing is unseen in this town ! ” Dartrey rejoined. 


TliE SQtriRES iN A conqueror's service 307 

strolling to his quarters along the breezy parade at night, 
he proposed to himself, that he would breathe an immediate 
caution to Kesta. How had she come to know this Mrs. 
Marsett ? But he was more seriously thinking of what Col- 
ney Durance called “ The Mustard Plaster ; ’’ the satirist’s 
phrase for warm relations with a married fair one : and 
Dartrey, clear of any design to have it at his breast, was 
beginning to take intimations of pricks and burns. They 
are an almost positive cure of inflammatory internal condi- 
tions. They were really hard on him, who had none to be 
cured. 

The hour was nigh midnight. As he entered his hotel, 
the porter ran off to the desk in his box, and brought him a 
note, saying that a lady had left it at half-past nine. — Left 
it ? — Then the lady could not be the alarming lady. He 
was relieved. The words of the letter were cabalistic ; 
these, beneath underlined address : — 

beg you to call on me, if I do not see you this evening. 
It is urgent; you will excuse me when I explain. Not late 
to-morrow. I am sure you will not fail to come. I could 
write what would be certain to bring you. I dare not trust 
any names to paper.” 

The signature was, Judith Marsett. 


CHAPTEE XXXI 

SHOWS HOW THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROr’s SERVICE 
HAVE AT TIMES TO DO KNIGHTLY CONQUEST OF THEM- 
SELVES 

By the very earliest of the trains shot away to light and 
briny air from London’s November gloom, which knows 
the morning through increase of gas jets, little Skepsey was 
hurried over suburban chimneys, in his friendly third-class 
carriage ; where we have reminders of ancient pastoral times 
peculiar to our country, as it may chance ; but where a man 
may speak to his neighbour right off without being deemed 
offensive. That is homely. A social fellow knitting closely 


308 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


to his fellows when he meets them, enjoys it, even at the 
cost of uncushioned seats: he can, if imps are in him, 
merryandrew as much as he pleases ; detested punctilio does 
not reign there; he can proselytize for the soul’s welfare; 
decry or uphold the national drink ; advertize a commercial 
Firm deriving prosperity from the favour of the multitude ; 
exhort to patriotism. All is accepted. Politeness is the 
rule, according to Skepsey’s experience of the Southern part 
of the third-class kingdom. And it is as well to mark the 
divisions, for the better knowledge of our countrymen. 
The North requires volumes to itself. 

The hard-grained old pirate-stock Northward has built the 
land, and is to the front when we are at our epic work. 
Meanwhile it gets us a blowzy character, by shouldering 
roughly among the children of civilization. Skepsey, 
journeying one late afternoon up a Kentish line, had, in 
both senses of the word, encountered a long-limbed navvy ; 
an intoxicated, he was compelled by his manly modesty to 
desire to think ; whose loathly talk, forced upon the hearing 
of a decent old woman opposite him, passed baboonish be- 
haviour ; so much so, that Skepsey civilly intervened ; sub- 
sequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a 
lesson at the station they were nearing. Upon his promising 
faithfully, that it should be a true and telling lesson, the 
navvy requested this pygmy spark to flick his cheek, merely 
to show he meant war in due sincerity ; and he as faith- 
fully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a 
breakage of the laws of the Company, Skepsey promptly 
did the deed. So they went forth. 

Skepsey alluded to the incident, for an example of the 
lamentable deficiency in science betrayed by most of our 
strong men when put to it ; and the bitter thought, that he 
could count well nigh to a certainty on the total absence of 
science in the long-armed navvy, whose fist on his nose 
might have been as the magnet of a pin, was chief among 
his reminiscences after the bout, destroying pleasure for the 
lover of Old England’s might. One blow would have sent 
Skepsey travelling. He was not seriously struck once. 
They parted, shaking hands ; the navvy confessing himself 
to have drunk a drop;” and that perhaps accounted for 
his having been topped by a dot on him.” 


THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S SERVICE 309 

He declined to make oath never to repeat his offence ; 
but said, sending his vanquisher to the deuce, with an ami- 
cable push at his shoulder, Damned if I ever forget five 
foot five stretched six foot flat ! ’’ 

Skepsey counted his feet some small amount higher; but 
our hearty rovers’ sons have their ballad moods when giving 
or taking a thrashing. One of the third-class passengers, a 
lad of twenty, became Skepsey ’s pupil, and turned out clever 
with the gloves, and was persuaded to enter the militia, and 
grew soon to be a corporal. Thus there was profit of the 
affair, though the navvy sank out of sight. Let us hope 
and pray he will not insult the hearing of females again. 
If only females knew how necessary it is, for their sakes, to 
be able to give a lesson now and then ! Ladies are posi- 
tively opposed. And Judges too, who dress so like them. 
The manhood of our country is kept down, in consequence. 
Mr. Durance was right, when he said something about the 
state of war being wanted to weld our races together : and 
yet we are always praying for the state of peace, which 
causes cracks and gaps among us ! Was that what he meant 
by illogical ? It seemed to Skepsey — oddly, considering 
his inferior estimate of the value of the fair sex — that a 
young woman with whom he had recently made acquaint- 
ance ; and who was in Brighton now, upon missionary 
work; a member of the ^^Army,” an officer of advancing 
rank, Matilda Pridden^ by name, : — was nearer to the secret 
of the right course of conduct for individual citizens and 
the entire country than any gentleman he knew. 

Yes, nearer to it than his master was ! Thinking of 
Mr. Victor Eadnor, Skepsey fetched a sigh. He had 
knocked at his master’s door at the office one day, and 
imagining the call to enter, had done so, and had seen a 
thing he could not expunge. Lady Grace Halley was 
there. From matters he gathered, Skepsey guessed her 
to be working for his master among the great folks, as he 
did with Jarniman, and Mr. Fenellan with Mr. Carling. 
But is it usual, he asked himself — his natural veneration 
framing the rebuke to his master thus — to repay the ser- 
vices of a lady so warmly ? — ^ We have all of us an ermined 
owl within us to sit in judgement of our superiors as well 
as our equals ; and the little man, notwithstanding a ser- 


310 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


vant’s bounden submissivenessj was forced to bear the 
judicial pronouncement upon his master’s behaviour. His 
master had, at the same time, been saying most weighty 
kind words more and more of late: one tiling: — that, if 
he gave all he had to his fellows, and did all he couhl, 
he should still be in their debt. And he was a' very 
wealthy gentleman. What are we to think ? The ways : 
of our superiors are wonderful. We do them homage: still 
we feel, we painfully feel, we are beginning to worship * 
elsewhere. It is the pain of a detachment of the very 
roots of our sea-weed heart from a rock. . Mr. Victor j 
Radnor was an honour to his country. Skepsey did not i 
place the name of Matilda Pridden beside it or in any way \ 
compare two such entirely different persons. At the i 
same time and most earnestly, while dreading to hear, he ' 
desired to have Matilda Pridden’s opinion of the case dis- 
tressing him. He never could hear it, because he could 
never be allowed to expound the case to her. Skepsey | 
sighed again: he as much as uttered: Oh, if we had a few 
thousands like her! — But what if we do have them? 
They won’t marry ! There they are, all that the country j 
requires in wives and mothers; and like Miss Priscilla ! 
Graves, they won’t marry ! j 

He looked through sad thoughts across the benches of ■ 
the compartments to the farther end of the carriage, where 1 
sat the Rev. Septimus Barmby, looking at him through a I 
meditation as obscure if not so mournful. Pew are the ! 
third-class passengers outward at that early hour in the 
winter season, and Skepsey ’s gymnastics to get beside ' 
the Rev. Septimus were unimpeded; though a tight-packed ; 
carriage of us poor journaliers would not have obstructed ! 
them with as much as a sneer. Mr. Barmby and Skepsey ^ 
greeted. The latter said, he had a holiday, to pay a visit 
to Miss Nesta. The former said, he hoped he should see 
Miss Nesta. Skepsey then rapidly brought the conversa- 
tion to a point where Matilda Pridden was comprised. He 
discoursed of the “Army” and her position in the Army, 
giving instances of her bravery, the devotion shown by her 
to the cause of morality, in all its forms. Mr. Barmby 
had his fortunes in his hands at the moment, he could not 
lend an attentive ear; and he disliked this Army, the title i 


THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S SERVICE 311 


it had taken, and the mixing of women and men in its 
ranks ; not to speak of a presumption in its proceedings, 
and the public marching and singing. Moreover, he en- 
joyed his one or two permissible glasses : he doubted that 
the Chiefs of the Army had common benevolence for the 
inoffensive pipe. But the cause of morality was precious 
to him; morality and a fit of softness, and the union of the 
happiest contrast of voices, had set him for a short while, 
before the dawn of Kesta's day, hankering after Priscilla 
Graves. Skepsey’s narrative of Matilda Pridden’s work 
down at the East of London, was effective; it had the 
ring to thrill a responsive chord in Mr. Barmby, who 
mused on London’s East, and martyrly service there. His 
present expectations were of a very different sort; but a 
beautiful bride, bringing us wealth, is no misleading beam, 
if we direct the riches rightly. Septimus, a solitary 
minister in those grisly haunts of the misery breeding 
vice, must needs accomplish less than a Septimus the hus- 
band of one of England’s chief heiresses: — ^ only not the 
most brilliant, owing to circumstances known to the Bev. 
Groseman Buttermore: strangely, and opportunely, re- 
vealed: for her exceeding benefit, it maybe hoped. She 
is no longer the ignorant girl, to reject the protecting hand 
of one whose cloth is the best of cloaking. A glance at 
Dudley Sowerby’s defection, assures our worldly wisdom 
too, that now is the time to sue. 

Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding 
of the desires of the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey’s tales of 
Matilda Pridden’s heroism caught his attention. He liked 
her deeds; he disliked the position in which the young 
woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so. 
Women are to be women ^ he said. 

Skepsey agreed : “ If we could get men to do the work, 
sir ! ” 

Mr. Barmby was launching forth : Plenty of men ! — His 
mouth was blocked by the reflection, that we count the 
men on our fingers ; often are we, as it were, an episcopal 
thumb surveying scarce that number of followers ! He 
diverged to censure of the marchings and the street- 
singing : the impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely 
musical ear. He disapproved altogether of Matilda Prid- 


312 


ONE OF OUR CONQUPmORS 


den’s military display, pronouncing her to be, ^‘Doubtless 
a worthy young person.’’ 

“Her age is twenty -seven,” said Skepsey, spying at the 
number of his own. 

“You have known her long ?” Mr. Barmby asked. 

“Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She 
believes very strongly in the will : — If I will this, if I 
will that, and it is the right will, not wickedness, it is 
done — as good as done; and force is quite superfluous. In 
her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.” 

“ Preaches ? ” 

“She moves a large assembly, sir.” 

“It would seem that England is becoming American- 
ized ! ” exclaimed the Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Al- 
most he groaned; and his gaze was hsh-like in vacancy, on 
hearing the little man speak of the present intrepid for- 
wardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men 
the most indigestible fact of our century: one that by con- 
trast throws an overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful 
mothers, who contentedly worked below the surface while 
men unremittingly attended to their interests above. 

Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book : a 
translation from the French, under a yelling title of savage 
hate of Old England and cannibal glee at her doom. Mr. 
Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without comment; 
nor did he reply to Skepsey’s forlorn remark: “We let 
them think they could do it ! ” 

Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss 
Eadnor likewise: if the poor child has a name. We pro- 
pose to supply the deficiency. She does not declare war 
upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voice. 
We abstain from enlargeing on the charms of her person. 
She has resources, which representatives of a rival creed 
would plot to secure. 

“ Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss 
Eadnor’s relatives ? ” said Mr. Barmby, as they emerged 
from tunnelled chalk. “ Mention, that I think of calling 
in the course of the day.” 

A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name. 
They parted at the station, roused by the smell of salt to 
bestow a more legitimate title on the day’s restorative be- 


THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S SERVICE 313 

ginning. Down the hill, along by the shops, and Skepsey, 
in sight of Miss Nesta^s terrace, considered it still an early 
hour for a visitor; so, to have the sea about him, he paid 
pier-money, and hurried against the briny wings of a 
South-wester; green waves, curls of foam, flecks of silver, 
under low-flying grey-dark cloud-curtains shaken to a rift, 
where at one shot the sun had a line of Nereids nodding, 
laughing, sparkling to him. Skepsey enjoyed it, at the 
back of thoughts military and naval. Visible sea, this 
girdle of Britain, inspired him to exultations in reverence. 
He wished Mr. Durance could behold it now and have 
such a breastful. He was wishing he knew a song of 
Britain and sea, rather fancying Mr. Durance to be in 
some way a bar to patriotic poetical recollection, when 
he saw his Captain Dartrey mounting steps out of an 
iron anatomy of the pier, and looking like a razor oft* a 
strap. 

^^Why, sir ! cried Skepsey. 

^^Just a plunge and a dozen strokes,’’ Dartrey said; 
^^and you ’ll come to my hotel and give me ten minutes of 
the ^ recreation; ’ and if you don’t come willingly, I shall 
insult your country.” 

Ah ! I wish Mr. Durance were here,” Skepsey rejoined. 

^Ht would upset his bumboat of epigrams. He rises at 
ten o’clock to a queasy breakfast by candlelight, and pro- 
ceeds to composition. His picture of the country is a 
portrait of himself by the artist.” 

^^But, sir. Captain Dartrey, you don’t think as Mr. 
Durance does of England!” 

There are lots to flatter her, Skepsey I A drilling 
can’t do her harm. You’re down to see Miss Nesta. 
Ladies don’t receive quite so early. And have jpu break- 
fasted ? Come on with me quick.” Dartrey led him on, 
saying: You have an eye at my stick. It was a legacy to 
me, by word of mouth, from a seaman of a ship I sailed 
in, who thought I had done him a service; and he died 
after all. He fell overboard drunk. He perished of the 
villain stuff. One of his messmates handed me the stick 
in Cape Town, sworn to deliver it. A good knot to grasp; 
and it ’s flexible and strong; stick or rattan, whichever you 
please; it gives point or caresses the shoulder; there’s no 


314 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


break in it, whack as you may. They call it a Demerara 
supple-jack. I ’ll leave it to you.” 

Skepsey declared his iatention to be the first to depart. 
He tried the temper of the stick, bent it a bit, and admired 
the prompt straightening. 

^Ht would give a good blow, sir.” 

Does its business without braining.” 

Perhaps for the reason, that it was not a handsome in- 
strument for display on fashionable promenades, Dartrey 
chose it among his collection by preference; as ugly dogs 
of a known fidelity are chosen for companions. The 
Demerara supple-jack surpasses bull-dogs in its fashion of 
assisting the master; for when once at it, the clownish- 
looking thing reflects upon him creditably, by developing 
a refined courtliness of style, while in no way showing a 
diminution of jolly ardour for the fray. It will deal 
you the stroke of a bludgeon with the playfulness of a 
cane. It bears resemblance to those accomplished natural 
actors, who conversationally present a dramatic situation 
in two or three spontaneous flourishes, and are themselves 
again, men of the world, the next minute. 

Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French 
rifle. He mentioned, in the form of query for no answer, 
the translation of the barking little volume he had shown 
to Mr. Barmby : he slapped at his breast-pocket, where it 
was. Not a ship was on the sea-line; and he seemed to 
deplore that vacancy. 

‘^But it tells both ways,” Dartrey said. “We don’t 
want to be hectoring in the Channel. All we want, is to 
be sure of our power, so as not to go hunting and fawning 
for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta lives. 
Brighton would be a choice place for a landing.” 

Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by 
pleading the country’s love of peace. 

“ Then you give-up your portion of the gains of war — 
an awful disgorgement,” said Dartrey. “If you are really 
for peace, you toss all your spare bones to the war-dogs. 
Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken for hypocrisy.” 

“I ’m afraid we are illogical, sir,” said Skepsey, adopt- 
ing one of the charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the abom- 
inable word. 


THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S SERVICE 315 

you run, ray friend.” Dartrey sped him up the 
steps of the hotel. 

A little note lay on his breakfast-table. His invalid 
uncle’s valet gave the morning’s report of the night. 

The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain 
Dartrey, in double under-linings of her brief words, to 
mount the stairs. He debated, and he went. 

She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to ex- 
plode: she had been weeping. “ My husband is off. He 
bids me follow him. What would you have me do ?” 

“ Go.” 

“ You don’t care what may happen to your friends, the 
Radnors ? ” 

“Not at the cost of your separation from your husband.” 

“You have seen him ! ” 

“Be serious.” 

“Oh, you cold creature! You know — you see: I can’t 
conceal. And you tell me to go. ^Go ’ ! Gracious heavens ! 
I’ve no claim on you; I have n’fc been able to do much; 1 
would have — never mind; believe me or not. And now 
I ’m to go : on the spot, I suppose. You ’ve seen the man 
I ’m to go to, too. I would bear it, if it were not away 
from . . . out of sight of — I ’m a fool of a woman, I 
know. There ’s frankness for you 1 and I could declare 
you ’re saying ‘ impudence ’ in your heart — or what you 
have for one. Have you one?” 

“My dear soul, it’s a flint. So just think of your 
duty.” Dartrey played the horrid part of executioner 
with some skill. 

Her bosom sprang to descend into abysses. 

“ And never a greater fool than when I sent for you to 
see such a face as I ’m showing I ” she cried, with lips that 
twitched and fingers that plucked at her belt. “ But you 
might feel my hatred of being tied to — dragged about 
over the Continent by that . . . perhaps you think a 
woman is not sensible of vulgarity in her husband ! I ’m 
bothering you ? I don’t say I have the slightest claim. 
You never made love to me, never 1 Never so much as 
pressed my hand or looked. Others have — as much as I 
let them. And before I saw you, I had not an idea of 
another man but that man. So you advise me to go ? ” 


316 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEEOKS 


“There ’s no other course.” 

“No other course. I don^t see one. What have I been 
dreaming of! Usually a woman feeling . . .” she struck 
at her breast, “ has had a soft word in her ear. ^ Go I 
don’t blame you, Captain Dartrey. At least, you ’re not 
the man to punish a woman for stripping herself, as I ’ve 
done. I call myself a fool — I ’m a lunatic. Trust me 
with your hand.” 

‘‘There you are.” 

She grasped the hand, and shut her eyes to make a long 
age of the holding on to him. “ Oh, you dear dear fellow ! 
— don’t think me unwomanly ; I must tell you now : I am 
naked and can’t disguise. I see you are ice — feel : and 
if you were different, I might be. You won’t be hurt by 
hearing you ’ve made yourself dear to me — without mean- 
ing to, I know ! It began that day at Lakelands; I fell in 
love with you the very first minute I set eyes on you ! 
There ’s a confession for a woman to make ! — and a mar- 
ried woman ! I ’m married, and I no more feel allegiance, 
as they call it, than if there never had been a ceremony 
and no Jacob Blathenoy was in existence. And why I 
should go to him I — But you shan’t be troubled. I did 
not begin to live, as a woman, before I met you. I can 
speak all this to you because — we women can’t be deceived 
in that — you are one of the men who can be counted on 
for a friend.” 

“I hope so,” Dartrey said, and his mouth hardened as 
nature’s electricity shot sparks into him from the touch 
and rocked him. 

“No, not yet: T will soon let it drop,” said she, and she 
was just then thrillingly pretty; she caressed the hand, 
placing it at her throat and moving her chin on it, as 
women fondle birds. “I am positively to go, then ?” 

“Positively, you are to go; and it’s my command.” 

“ Not in love with anyone at all ? ” 

“Not with a soul.” 

“ Not with a woman ? ” 

“With no woman.” 

“Nor maid?” 

“No! and no to everything. And an end to the 
catechism ! ” 


THE SQUIKES IN A CONQUEROE’s SERVICE 8l1 

‘‘It is really a flint that beats here she said, and with 
a shyness in adventurousness, she struck the point of her 
forefinger on the rib. Fancy me in love with a flint! 
And running to be dutiful to a Jacob Blathenoy, at my 
flint’s command. I ’m half in love with doing what I 
hate, because this cold thing here bids me do it. I believe 
I married for money, and now it looks as if I were to have 
my bargain with poverty to bless it.” 

There I may help,” said Dartrey, relieved at sight of a 
loophole, to spring to some initiative out of the paralysis 
cast on him by a pretty little woman’s rending of her veil. 
A man of honour alone with a woman who has tossed con- 
cealment to the winds, is a riddled target indeed: he is 
tempted to the peril of cajoleing, that he may escape from 
the torment and the ridicule; he is tempted to sigh for the 
gallant spirit of his naughty adolescence. Come to me 
— will you ? — apply to me, if there ’s ever any need. I 
happen to have money. And forgive me for naming it.” 

She groaned: ‘‘Don’t ! I ’m sure, and I thought it from 
the first, you ’re one of the good men, and the woman who 
meets you is lucky, and wretched, and so she ought to be ! 
Only to you should I ! ... do believe that ! I won’t 
speak of what excuses I ’ve got. You ’ve seen.” 

“Don’t think of them: there ’ll be danger in it.” 

“Shall you think of me in danger ?” 

“ Silly, silly ! Don’t you see you have to do with a flint ! 
I ’ve gone through fire. And if I were in love with you, 
I should start you off to your husband this blessed day.” 

“And you ’re not the slightest wee wee bit in love with 
me ! ” 

“Perfectly true; but I like you; and if we ’re to be hand 
in hand, in the time to-come, you must walk firm at 
present.” 

“ I ’m to go to-day ? ” 

“ You are.” 

“ Without . . . one ? I dare say we shan’t meet again.” 

The riddled target kicked. Dartrey contrasted Jacob 
Blathenoy with the fair wife, and commiseratingly exon- 
erated her; he lashed at himself for continuing to be in 
this absurdest of postures, and not absolutely secure for 
all that. His head shook. “Friends, you ’ll find best.” 


3l8 ONE OF OUE CONQUEEORg 

“Well! ’’ she sighed, “I feel I ’m doomed to go famished 
through life. There ^s never to be such a thing as love, for 
me! I can’t tell you — no woman could: though you’ll 
say I ’ve told enough. I shall burn with shame when I 
think of it. I could go on my knees to have your arms 
round me once. I could kill myself for saying it ! — I 
should feel that I had one moment of real life. — I know 
I ought to admire you. They say a woman hates if she ’s 
refused. I can’t: I wish I were able to. I could have 
helped the Radnors better by staying here and threatening 
never to go to him unless he swore not to do them injury. 
He ’s revengeful. Just as you like. You say ‘ Go,’ and I 
go. There. I may kiss your hand ?” 

“ Give me yours.” 

Dartrey kissed the hand. She kissed the mark of his 
lips. He got himself away, by promising to see her to the 
train for Paris. Outside her door, he was met by the 
reflection, coming as a thing external, that he might vera- 
ciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger 
for breakfast : nay, that he would have done so, if he had 
been downright in earnest. Por she had the prettiness to 
cast a spell ; a certain curve at the lips, a fluttering droop 
of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that led long distances 
away to forests and nests. This little woman had the 
rosy-peeping June bud’s plumpness. What of the man 
who refused to kiss her once ? Cold antecedent immer- 
sion had to be thanked; and stringent vacuity; perhaps a 
spotting ogre-image of her possessor. Some sense of 
right-doing also, we hope. Dartrey angrily attributed 
his good conduct to the lowest motives. He went so far 
as to accuse himself of having forborne to speak of break- 
fast, from a sort of fascinated respect for the pitch of a 
situation that he despised and detested. Then again, 
when beginning to eat, his good conduct drew on him a 
chorus of the jeers of all the martial comrades he had 
known. But he owned he would have had less excuse than 
they, had he taken advantage of a woman’s inability, at a 
weak moment, to protect herself : or rather, if he had not 
behaved in a manner to protect her from herself. He 
thought of his buried wife, and the noble in the base of 
that poor soul; needing constantly a present helper, for 


THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR’S SERVICE Sl9 

the nobler to conquer. Be true man with a woman, she 
must be viler than the devil has yet made one, if she does 
not follow a strong right lead : — but be patient, of course. 
And the word patience here means more than most men 
contain. Certainly a man like Jacob Blathenoy was a 
mouthful for any woman: and he had bought his wife, he 
deserved no pity. Not? Probably not. That view, how- 
ever, is unwholesome and opens on slides. Pity of his 
wife, too, gets to be fervidly active with her portrait, 
fetches her breath about us. As for condemnation of the 
poor little woman, her case was not unexampled, though 
the sudden flare of it startled rather. Mrs. Victor could 
read men and women closely. Yes, and Victor, when he 
schemed — but Dartrey declined to be throwing blame 
right or left. More than by his breakfast, and in a pref- 
erable direction, he was refreshed by Skepsey’s narrative 
of the deeds of Matilda Pridden. 

^‘The right sort of girl for you to know, Skepsey,^’ he 
said. ^‘The best in life is a good woman.’’ 

Skepsey exhibited his book of the Gallic howl. 

“They have their fits now and then, and they’re soon 
over and forgotten,” Dartrey said. “The worst of it is, 
that we remember.” 

After the morning’s visit to his uncle, he peered at half 
a dozen sticks in the corner of the room, grasped their 
handles, and selected the Demerara supple-jack, for no 
particular reason; the curved knot was easy to the grasp. 
It was in his mind, that this person signing herself Judith 
Marsett, might have something to say which intimately 
concerned Nesta. He fell to brooding on it, until he 
wondered why he had not been made a trifle anxious by 
the reading of the note overnight. Skepsey was left at 
Nesta’s house. 

Dartrey found himself expected by the servant waiting 
on Mrs. Marsett. 


320 


OisTE OF OtTR CONQUERORS 


CHAPTEK XXXII 

SHOWS HOW TEMPER M4Y KINDLE TEMPER AND AN INDIG- 
NANT WOMAN GET HER WEAPON 

Judith Marsett stood in her room to receive Nesta’s 
hero. She was flushed, and had thinned her lips for utter- 
ance of a desperate thing, after the first severe formalities. 

Her aim was to preserve an impressive decorum. She 
was at the same time burning to speak out furious wrath, 
in words of savage rawness, if they should come, as a 
manner of slapping the world’s cheek for the state to 
which it reduces its women; whom one of the superior 
creatures can insult, and laugh. 

Men complaining of the peace which is near their extinc- 
tion,” have but to shuffle with the sex; they will experi- 
ence as remarkable a change as if they had passed off land 
on to sea. 

Dartrey had some flitting notion of the untamed original 
elements women can bring about us in his short observant 
bow to Mrs. Marsett, following so closely upon the scene 
with Mrs. Blathenoy. 

But this handsome woman’s look of the dull red line of 
a sombre fire, that needed only stir of a breath to shoot 
the blaze, did not at all alarm him. He felt refreshingly 
strung by it. 

She was discerned at a glance to be an aristocratic mem- 
ber of regions where the senses perpetually simmer when 
they are not boiling. The talk at the Club recurred to 
him; How could Nesta have come to know the woman ? 
His questioning of the chapter of marvellous accidents, 
touched Nesta simply, as a young girl to be protected, 
without abhorrently involving the woman. He had his 
ideas of the Spirit of Woman stating her case to the One 
Judge, for lack of an earthly just one; a story different 
from that which is proclaimed pestilential by the body of 
censors under conservatory glass; where flesh is delicately 
nurtured, highly prized; spirit not so much so; and where 
the pretty tricking of the flesh is taken for a spiritual 
ascendancy. 


HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER 


321 


In spite of her turbulent breast’s burden to deliver, Mrs* 
Marsett’s feminine acuteness was alive upon Dartrey, con- 
firming here and there Nesta’s praises of him. She liked 
his build and easy carriage of a muscular frame: her Ned 
was a heavy man. More than Dartrey ’s figure, as she 
would have said, though the estimate came second, she 
liked his manner with her. Not a doubt was there, that 
he read her position. She could impose upon some : not 
upon masculine eyes like these. They did not scrutinize, 
nor ruffle a smooth surface with a snap at petty impres- 
sions ; and they were not cynically intimate or dominating 
or tentatively amorous : clear good fellowship was in them. 
And it was a blessedness (whatever might be her feeling 
later, when she came to thank him at heart) to be in the 
presence of a man whose appearance breathed of offering 
her common ground, whereon to meet and speak together, 
unburdened by the hunting world, and by the stoneing 
world. Such common ground seems a kind of celestial to 
the better order of those excluded from it. 

Dartrey relieved her midway in a rigid practice of the 
formalities: “I think I may guess that you have some- 
thing to tell me relating to Miss Eadnor ? ” 

“It is.” Mrs. Marsett gathered up for an immediate 
plunge, and deferred it. “I met her — we went out with 
the riding-master. She took to me. I like her — I could 
say” (the woman’s voice dropped dead low, in a tremble), 
“ I love her. She is young : — I could kneel to her. Do 
you know a Major Worrell ?” 

“Worrell? no.” 

“ He is a — calls himself a friend of my — of Captain 
Marsett’s. He met us out one day.” 

“ He permitted himself to speak to Miss Eadnor ? ” 

She rejoiced in Dartrey ’s look. “Not then. First let 
me tell you. I can hardly tell you. But Miss Eadnor 
tells me you are not like other men. You have made your 
conclusions already. Are you asking what right I had to 
be knowing her ? It is her goodness. Accident began it; 
1 did not deceive her ; as soon as ever I could I — I have 
Captain Marsett’s promise to me: at present he ’s situated, 
he — but I opened my heart to her : as much as a woman 
can. It came ! Did I do very wrong ? ” 

21 


322 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


‘^1 ’m not here to decide: continue, pray.” 

Mrs. Marsett aimed at formal speech, and was driving 
upon her natural in anger. ‘‘I swear I did it for the best. 
She is an innocent girl . . . young lady : only she has a 
head; she soon reads things. I saw the kind of cloud in 
her. I spoke. I felt bound to: she said she would not 
forsake me. — I was bound to! And it was enough to 
break my heart, to think of her despising me. No, she 
forgave, pitied; she was kind. Those are the angels who 
cause us to think of changeing. I don’t care for sermons, 
but when I meet charity : — I won’t bore you ! ” 

^^You don’t.” 

‘‘My . . . Captain Marsett can’t bear — he calls it 
Psalmody. He thinks things ought always to be as they 
are, with women and men; and women preachers he does 
detest. She is not one to preach. You are waiting to hear 
what I have to tell. That man Major Worrell has tried to 
rob me of everj^thing I ever had to set a value on : — love, 
I ’d say; — he laughs at a woman like me loving.” 

Dartrey nodded, to signify a known sort of fellow. 

“She came here.” Mrs. Marsett’s tears had risen. “I 
ought not to have let her come. I invited her — for once : 
I am lonely. None of my sex — none I could respect! 1 
meant it for only once. She promised to sing to me. 
And, Oh! how she sings! You have heard her. My 
whole heart came out. I declare I believe girls exist 
who can hear our way of life — and I ’m not so bad except 
compared with that angel, who heard me, and was and is, 
I could take oath, no worse for it. Some girls can; she is 
one. I am all for bringing them up in complete innocence. 
If I was a great lady, my daughters should never know 
anything of the world until they were married. But Miss 
Eadnor is a young lady who cannot be hurt. She is above 
us. Oh ! what a treasure for a man ! — and my God ! for 
any man born of woman to insult a saint, as she is ! — He 
is a beast ! ” 

“Major Worrell met her here ? ” 

“ Blame me as much as you like : I do myself. Half my 
rage with him is at myself for putting her in the way of 
such a beast to annoy. Each time she came, I said it was 
to be the last. I let her see what a mercy from heaven 


HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER 


823 


she was to me. She would come. It has not been many 
times. She wishes me either to . . . Captain Marsett has 
promised. And nothing seems hard to me when my own 
God’s angel is by. She is ! I’m not such a bad woman, 
but I never before I knew her knew the meaning of the 
word virtue. There is the young lady that man worried 
with his insulting remarks ! though he must have known 
she was a lady: — because he found her in my rooms.” 

‘‘You were present when, as you say, he insulted her ?” 

“I was. Here it commenced; and he would see her 
downstairs.” 

“You heard ? ” 

“Of course, I never left her.” 

“Give me a notion ...” 

“ To get her to make an appointment : to let him conduct 
her home.” 

“ She was alone ? ” 

“Her maid was below.” 

“And this happened . . . ? 

“Yesterday, after dark. My Hed — Captain Marsett 
encourages him to be familiar. I should be the lowest of 
women if I feared the threats of such a reptile of a man. 
I could tell you more. I can’t always refuse his visits, 
though if Hed knew the cur he is! Captain Marsett is 
easy-going.” 

“I should like to know where he lives.” 

She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about 
with a card, handing it, quite aware that it was a charge 
of powder. 

Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said ; 
and especially they seemed a cover to the bald and often 
spotty language leaping out of her, against her better taste, 
when her temper was up. 

“Somewhere not ver}’^ distant,” said Dartrey, perusing. 
“ Is he in the town to-day, do you know ? ” 

“I am not sure; he may be. Her name . . .” 

“Have no fear. Ladies’ names are safe.” 

“I am anxious that she may not be insulted again.” 

“ Did she show herself conscious of it ? ” 

“She stopped speaking: she looked at the door. She 
may come again — or never! through that man ! ” 


824 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


‘‘You receive him, at his pleasure ? 

“Captain Marsett wishes me to. He is on his way 
home. He calls Major Worrell my pet spite. All I want 
is, not to hear of the man. I swear he came yesterday on 
the chance of seeing — for he forced his way up past my 
servant; he must have seen Miss Kadnor’s maid below.” 

“You don’t mean, that he insulted her hearing ?” 

“Oh ! Captain Fenellan, you know the style.” 

“ Well, I thank you,” Dartrey said. “ The young lady is 
the daughter of my dearest friends. She ’s one of the 
precious — you ’re quite right. Keep the tears back.” 

“I will.” She heaved open-mouthed to get physical 
control of the tide. “When you say that of her! — how 
can I help it ? It ’s I fear, because I fear . . . and I ’ve 
no right to expect ever . . . but if I ’m never again to 
look on that dear face, tell her I shall — I shall pray for 
her in my grave. Tell her she has done all a woman can, 
an angel can, to save my soul. I speak truth: my very 
soul! I could never go to the utter bad after knowing her. 
I don’t — you know the world — I’m a poor helpless 
woman! — don’t swear to give up my Ned if he does 
break the word he promised once; I can’t see how I could. 
I haven’t her courage. I haven’t — what it is! — You 
know her : it ’s in her eyes and her voice. If I had her 
beside me, then I could starve or go to execution — I could, 
I am certain. Here I am, going to do what you men hate. 
Let me sit.” 

“ Here ’s a chair,” said Dartrey. “ I ’ve no time to spare; 
good day, for the present. You will permit me to call.” 

“Oh! come,” she cried, out of her sobs, for excuse. 
They were genuine, or she would better have been able to 
second her efforts to catch a distinct vision of his retreat- 
ing figure. 

She beheld him, when he was in the street, turn for the 
district where Major Worrell had his lodgeings. That set 
her mind moving, and her tears fell no longer. 

Major Worrell was not at home. Dartrey was informed 
that he might be at his Club. 

At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to 
London and being expected down in the afternoon. 
Colonel Sudley named the train: an early train; the major 


HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEIMPER 


325 


was engaged to dine at the Club. Dartrey had information 
supplied to him concerning Major Worrell and Captain 
Marsett, also Mrs. Marsett. She had a history. Worthy 
citizens read the description of history with interest when 
the halo of Royalty is round it. They may, if their read- 
ing extends, perceive, that it has been the main turbid 
stream in old Mammon’s train since he threw his bait for 
flesh. They might ask, too, whether it is likely to cease 
to flow while he remains potent. The lady’s history was 
brief, and bore recital in a Club; came off quite honourably 
there. Regarding Major Worrell, the tale of him showed 
him to have a pass among men. He managed cleverly to 
get his pleasures out of a small income and a ^‘fund of 
anecdote.” His reputation indicated an anecdotist of the 
table, prevailing in the primitive societies, where the art 
of conversing does not come by nature, and is exercised in 
monosyllabic undertones or grunts until the narrator’s well- 
masticated popular anecdote loosens a digestive laughter, 
and some talk ensues. He was Marsett’s friend, and he 
boasted of not letting Hed Marsett make a fool of himself. 

Dartrey was not long in shaping the man’s character: 
Worrell belonged to the male birds of upper air, who 
mangle what female prey they are forbidden to devour. 
And he had Miss Radnor’s name: he had spoken her name 
at the Club overnight. He had roused a sensation, because 
of a man being present, Percy Southweare, who was related 
to a man as good as engaged to marry her. The major 
never fell into a quarrel with sons of nobles, if he could 
help it, or there might have been a pretty one. 

So Colonel Sudley said. 

Dartrey spoke musing: “I don’t know how he may class 
me; I have an account to square with him.” 

^Ht won’t do in these days, my good friend. Come and 
cool yourself; and we ’ll lunch here. I shan’t leave you.” 

By all means. We’ll lunch, and walk up to the sta- 
tion, and you will point him out to me.” 

Dartrey stated Major Worrell’s offence. The colonel 
was not astonished; but evidently he thought less of Wor- 
rell’s behaviour to Miss Radnor in Mrs. Marsett’s presence 
than of the mention of her naiiie at the Club : and that, 
he seemed to think, had a shade of excuse against the 


326 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


charge of monstrous. He blamed the young lady who 
could go twice to visit a Mrs. Marsett; partly exposed a 
suspicion of her. Dartrey let him talk. They strolled 
along the parade, and were near the pier. 

Suddenly saying: There, beside our friend in clerical 
garb: here she comes; judge if that is the girl for the 
foulest of curs to worry, no matter where she ^s found,’’ 
Dartrey directed the colonel’s attention to Nesta and Mr. 
Barmby turning off the pier and advancing. 

He saluted. She bowed. There was no contraction of 
her eyelids; and her face was white. The mortal life 
appeared to be deadened in her cold wide look; as when 
the storm -wind banks a leaden remoteness, leaving blown 
space of sky. 

The colonel said: ^‘No, that ’s not the girl a gentleman^ 
would offend.” 

What man! ” cried Dartrey. “If we had a Society for 
the trial of your gentleman! — but he has only to call 
himself gentleman to get grant of licence : and your Society 
protects him. It won’t punish, and it won’t let you. But 
you saw her : ask yourself — what man could offend that 
girl!” 

“Still, my friend, she ought to keep clear of the 
Marsetts.” 

“ When I meet him, I shall treat him as one out of the 
law.” 

“You lead on to an ultimate argument with the 
hangman.” 

“ We ’ll dare it, to waken the old country. Old England 
will count none but Worrells in time. As for discreet, if 
you like ! — the young lady might have been more discreet. 
She ’s a girl with a big heart. If we were all everlast- 
ingly discreet ! ” 

Dartrey may have meant, that the consequence of a pro- 
longed conformity would be the generation of stenches to 
shock to purgeing tempests the tolerant heavens over such 
smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas about movement; 
about the good of women, and the health of his England. 
The feeling of the hopelessness of pleading ISTesta’s conduct, 
for the perfect justification of it to son or daughter of our 
impressing conventional world ' — even to a friend, that 


A PAIR OF WOOERS 


327 


friend a true man, a really chivalrous man ! — drove him 
back in a silence upon his natural brotherhood with souls 
that dare do. It was a wonder, to think of his finding this 
kinship in a woman. In a girl? — and the world holding 
that virgin spirit to be unclean or shadowed because its 
rays were shed on foul places? He clasped the girl. Her 
smitten clear face, the face of the second sigh after tor- 
ture, bent him in devotion to her image. 

The clasping and the worshipping were independent of 
personal ardours : quaintly mixed with semi-paternal recol- 
lections of the little ^^blne butterfly of the days at Craye 
Farm and Creckholt; and he had heard of Dudley Sow- 
erby’s pretensions to her hand. Nesta’s youthfulness cast 
double age on him from the child’s past. He pictured the 
child; pictured the girl, with her look of solitariness of 
sight; as in the desolate wide world, where her noble com- 
passion for a woman had unexpectedly, painfully, almost 
by transubstantiation, rack-screwed her to woman’s mind. 
And above sorrowful, holy were those eyes. 

They held sway over Dartrey, and lost it some steps on ; 
his demon temper urgeing him to strike at Major Worrell, 
as the cause of her dismayed expression. He was not the 
happier for dropping to his nature ; but we proceed more 
easily, all of us, when the strain which lifts us a foot or 
two off our native level is relaxed. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

A PAIR OF WOOERS 

That ashen look of the rise out of death from one of our 
mortal wounds, was caused by deeper convulsions in 
Nesta’s bosom than Dartrey could imagine. 

She had gone for the walk with Mr. Barmby, reading 
the omen of his tones in the request. Dorothea and Vir- 
ginia would have her go. The clerical gentleman, a friend 
of the Rev. Abram Posterley; and one who deplored poor 
Mr. Posterley’s infatuation; and one besides wdio belonged 


328 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


to Nesta’s musical choir in London, — seemed a safe com- 
panion for the child. The grand organ of Mr. Barmby’s 
voice, too, assured them of a devout seriousness in him, 
that arrested any scrupulous little questions. They could 
not conceive his uttering the nonsensical empty stuff, com- 
pliments to their beauty and what not, which girls hear 
sometimes from inconsiderate gentlemen, to the having of 
their heads turned. Moreover, ISTesta had rashly promised 
her father’s faithful servant Skepsey to walk out with him 
in the afternoon; and the ladies hoped she would find the 
morning’s walk to have been enough; good little man 
though Skepsey was, they were sure. But there is the 
incongruous for young women of station on a promenade. 

Mr. Barmby headed to the pier. After pacing up and • 
down between the briny gulls and a polka-band, he made 
his way forethoughtfully to the glass-sheltered seats front- 
ing East: where, as his enthusiasm for the solemnity of 
the occasion excited him to say, We have a view of the 
terraces and the cliffs;” and where not more than two 
enwrapped invalid figures were ensconsed. Then it was, 
that Nesta recalled her anticipation of his possible design; 
forgotten by her during their talk of her dear people: 
Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, and the Yatts, and 
Simeon Eenellan, Peridon and Catkin, and Skepsey like- 
wise ; and the very latest news of her mother. She wished 
she could have run before him, to spare him. He would 
not notice a sign. Girls must wait and hear. 

It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on 
to the sinking into its fellow; and onward again for the 
swell and the weariful lapse; and up at last bursting to 
the sheet of white. The far-heard roar and the near com- 
mingled, giving Mr. Barmby a semblance to the powers of 
ocean. 

At the first direct note, the burden of which necessitated 
a pause, she petitioned him to be her friend, to think of 
himself as her friend. 

But a vessel laden with merchandize, that has crossed 
wild seas for this particular port, is hardly to be debarred 
from discharging its goods on the quay by simple intima- 
tions of their not being wanted. We are precipitated both 
by the aim and the tedium of the lengthened voyage to insist 


A PAIK OF \yOOEKS 


329 


that they be seen. We believe perforce in their tempting- 
ness ; and should allurement fail, we fall back to the belief 
in our eloquence. An eloquence to expose the qualities 
they possess, is the testification in the promise of their 
excellence. She is to be induced by feeling to s^e it. We 
are asking a young lady for the precious gift of her hand. 
We respect her; and because of our continued respect, de- 
spite an obstruction, we have come to think we have a claim 
upon her gratitude ; could she but be led to understand how 
different we are from some other men ! — from one hitherto 
favoured among them, unworthy of this prize, however 
personally exalted and meritorious. 

The wave of wide extension rolled and sank and rose, 
heaving lifeless variations of the sickly streaks on its dull 
green b^ack. 

Dudley Sowerby’s defection was hinted at and accounted 
for, by the worldly test of worldly considerations. 

What were they ? — I^esta glanced. 

An indistinct comparison was modestly presented, of one 
unmoved by worldly considerations. 

But what were they ? She was wakened by a lamp, and 
her darkness was all inflammable to it. 

‘‘ Oh ! Mr. Barmby, you have done me the honour to 
speak before ; you know my answer,” she said. 

‘‘ You were then subject to an influence. A false, I may 
say wicked, sentiment upholding celibacy.^’ 

My poor Louise ? She never thought of influencing 
me. She has her views, I mine. Our friendship does not 
depend on a ^treaty of reciprocity.’ We are one at heart, 
each free to judge and act, as it should be in friendship. I 
heard from her this morning. Her brother will be able to 
resume his military duties next month. Then she will 
return to me.” 

We propose ! ” rejoined Mr. Barmby, 

Beholding the involuntary mercurial rogue-dimple he had 
started from a twitch at the corner of her lips, the good 
gentleman pursued: ^^Can we dare write our designs for the 
month to come ? Ah ! — I will say — Nesta ! give me the 
hope I beg to have. See the seriousness. You are at liberty. 
That other has withdrawn his pretensions. We will not 
blame him. He is in expectation of exalted rank, Whero 


330 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


there is any shadow ! . . Mr. Barmby paused on his 
outroll of the word ; but immediately, not intending to 
weigh down his gentle hearer with the significance in it, 
resumed at a yet more sonorous depth: ^^He is under the 
obligation to his family ; an old, a venerable family. In the 
full blaze of public opinion! His conduct can be palliated 
by us, too. There is a right and wrong in minor things, 
independent of the higher rectitude. AVe pardon, we can 
partly support, the worldly view.’’ 

There is a shadow ? ” said Nesta ; and her voice was 
lurefully encouraging. 

He was on the footing where men are precipitated by 
what is within them to blunder. On you — no. On you 
personally, not at all. Ho. It could not be deemed so. 
Hot by those knowing, esteeming — not by him who loves 
you, and would, with his name, would, with his whole 
strength, envelop, shield . . . certainly certainly not.” 

‘Ht is on my parents ?” she said. 

^^But to me nothing, nothing, quite nought ! To confound 
the innocent with the guilty ! . . . and excuses may exist. 
We know but how little we know ! ” 

It is on both my parents ? ” she said, with a simplicity 
that induced him to reply : Before the world. But not, 
I repeat . . .” 

The band-instruments behind the sheltering glass flour- 
ished on their termination of a waltz. 

She had not heeded their playing. How she said : The 
music is over ; we must not be late at lunch ; ” and she 
stood up and moved. 

He sprang to his legs and obediently stepped out: ^^I 
shall have your answer to-day ? this evening ? Hesta I ” 

^^Mr. Barmby, it will be the same. You will be kind to 
me in not asking me again.” 

He spoke further. She was dumb. 

Had he done ill or well for himself and for her when he 
named the shadow on her parents ? He dwelt more on her 
than on himself : he would not have wounded her to win the 
blest affirmative. Could she have been entirely ignorant ? 
— and after Dudley Sowerby’s defection ? For such it 
was : the Kev. Stuart Bern had declared the union between 
the almost designated head of the Cantor family and a 


A PAIR OF WOOERS 


331 


young person of no name, of worse than no birth, impos- 
sible : absolutely and totally impossible,’^ he had said, in 
his impressive fashion, speaking from his knowledge of the 
family and an acquaintance with Dudley. She must neces- 
sarily have learnt why Dudley Sowerby withdrew. No 
parents of an attractive daughter should allow her to remain 
unaware of her actual position in the world. It is criminal, 
a reduplication of the criminality! Yet she had not spoken 
as one astonished. She was mysterious. Women are so : 
young women most of all. It is undecided still whether 
they do of themselves conceive principles, or should submit 
to an imposition of the same upon them in terrorem. — 
Mysterious truly, but most attractive ! As Lady Bountiful 
of a district, she would have in her maturity the majestic 
stature to suit a dispensation of earthly good things. And, 
strangely, here she was, at this moment, rivalling to excel- 
ling all others of her sex (he verified it in the crowd of 
female faces passing), when they, if they but knew the 
facts, would visit her very appearance beside them on a 
common footing as an intrusion and a scandal. To us who 
know, such matters are indeed wonderful ! 

Moved by reflective compassion, Mr. Barmby resumed the 
wooer’s note, some few steps after he had responded to the 
salutation of Dartrey Fenellan and Colonel Sudley. She 
did not speak. She turned her forehead to him ; and the 
absence of the world from her eyes chilled his tongue. 

He declined the pleasure of the lunch with the Duvidney 
ladies. He desired to be alone, to question himself fasting, 
to sound the deed he had done ; for he had struck on a 
suspicion of selfishness in it : and though Love must needs 
be an egoism. Love is no warrant for the doing of a hurt to 
the creature beloved. Thoughts upon Skepsey and the tale 
of his Matilda Pridden’s labours in poor neighbourhoods, to 
which he had been inattentive during the journey down 
to the sea, invaded him ; they were persistent. He was 
a worthy man, having within him the spiritual impulse 
curiously ready to take the place where a material disap- 
pointment left vacancy. The vulgar sort embrace the devil 
at that stage. Before the day had sunk, Mr. Barmby’s 
lowest wish was, to be a light, as the instrument of his 
Church in her ministrations amid the haunts of sin and 


332 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOES 


slime, to such plain souls as Daniel Skepsey and Matilda 
Pridden. And he could still be that, if Nesta, in the chap- 
ters of the future, changed her mind. She might ; for her 
good she would ; he reserved the hope. His light was one 
to burn beneath an extinguisher. 

At the luncheon table of the Duvidney ladies, it was a 
pain to Dorothea and Virginia to witness how poor the 
appetite their Nesta brought in from the briny blowy walk. 
They prophesied against her chances of a good sleep at 
night, if she did not eat heartily. Virginia timidly re- 
marked on her paleness. Both of them put their simple 
arts in motion to let her know, that she was dear to them : 
so dear as to make them dread the hour of parting. They 
named their dread of it. They had consulted in private 
and owned to one another, that they did really love the 
child, and dared not look forward to what they should do 
without her. The dear child’s paleness and want of appe- 
tite (they remembered they were observing a weak inno- 
cent girl) suggested to them mutually the idea of a young 
female heart sickening, for the old unhappy maiden reason. 
But, if only she might return with them to the Wells, the 
Eev. Stuart Kem would assure her to convince her of her 
not being quite quite forsaken. He, or some one having 
sanction from Victor, might ultimately (the ladies waiting 
anxiously in the next room, to fold her on the warmth of 
their bosoms when she had heard) impart to her the knowl- 
edge of circumstances, which would, under their further 
tuition concerning the particular sentiments of great fami- 
lies and the strict duties of the scions of the race, help 
to account for and excuse the Hon. Dudley Sowerby’s 
behaviour. 

They went up to the drawing-room, talking of Skepsey 
and his tale of Miss Pridden, for Nesta’s amusement. Any 
talk of her Skepsey usually quickened her lips to reminis- 
cent smiles and speech. Now she held on to gazeing ; and 
sadly, it seemed, as if some object were not present. 

For a vague encouragement, Dorothea said: ‘^One week, 
and we are back home at Moorsedge ! ” — not so far from 
Cronidge, was implied, for the administering of some foolish 
temporary comfort. And it was as when a fish on land 
springs its hollow sides in alien air for the sustaining 


A PAIR OF WOOERS 


333 


element ; the girl panted ; she clasped Dorothea's hand and 
looked at Virginia: My mother — I must see her ! she 
said. They were slightly stupefied by the unwonted mention 
of her mother. They made no reply. They never had done 
so when there was allusion to her mother. Their silence 
now struck a gong at the girl’s bosom. 

Dorothea had it in mind to say, that if she thirsted for 
any special comfort, the friends abQut her would offer con- 
solation for confidence. 

Before she could speak, Perrin the footman entered, bear- 
ing the card of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby. 

Mr. Dudley Sowerby begged for an immediate interview 
with Miss Kadnor. 

The ladies were somewhat agitated, but no longer per- 
plexed as to their duties. They had quitted Moorsedge to 
avoid the visit of his family. If he followed, it signified 
that which they could not withstand : — The Tivoli falls ! 
as they named the fateful tremendous human passion, from 
the reminiscences of an impressive day on their travels in 
youth ; when the leaping torrent had struck upon a tale of 
love they were reading. They hurriedly entreated Nesta 
to command her nerves ; peremptorily requested her to stay 
where she was; showed her spontaneously, by way of 
histrionic adjuration, the face to be worn by young ladies 
at greetings on these occasions ; kissed her and left her; 
Virginia whispering : He is true ! 

Dudley entered the drawing-room, charged with his happy 
burden of a love that had passed through the furnace. She 
stood near a window, well in the light; she hardly gave 
him welcome. His address to her was hurried, rather un- 
certain, coherent enough between the drop and the catch of 
articulate syllables. He found himself holding his hat. He 
placed it on the table, and it rolled foolishly ; but soon he 
was by her side, having two free hands to claim her one. 

You are thinking, you have not heard from me ! I have 
been much occupied,’^ he said. My brother is ill, very ill. 
I have your pardon ? ’’ 

‘‘ Indeed you have — if it has to be asked.^^ 

I have it ? ’’ 

Have I to grant it ? 

I own to remissness.’^ 


334 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOES 


did not blame you.’’ 

^^Nesta! ...” 

Her coldness was unshaken. 

He repeated the call of her name. I should have 
written — I ought to have written ! — I could not have ex- 
pressed . . . You do forgive ? So many things ! ” 

You come from Cronidge to-day ? ” 

‘^From my family — to you.” 

She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent 
were explicable in a sentence. It had to be deferred. 

Eeviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict 
undergone by him during the period of the silence between 
them, he wondered at the vastness of the love which had 
conquered objections, to him so poignant. 

There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her 
birth when looking on her face. Hor when thinking of the 
beauty of her character, in absence or in presence, was there 
any. He had mastered distaste to such a degree, that he 
forgot the assistance he had received from the heiress for 
enabling him to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is 
the imperious requirement of superior station ; and more 
money and more : in these our modern days of the merchant’s 
wealth, and the miner’s, and the gigantic American and 
Australian millionaires, high rank is of necessity vowed, in 
peril of utter eclipse, to the possession of money. Still it is, 
when assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentle- 
man in whose bosom love and the buzzing world have fought 
their battle out. He could believe it thoroughly fought out, 
by the prolonged endurance of a contest lasting many days 
and nights; in the midst of which, at. one time, the task of 
writing to tell her of his withdrawal from the engagement, 
was the cause of his omission to write. 

As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered 
features, to repress an indicative dread of some intrepid 
force behind it, that might be unfeminine, however gentle 
the external lineaments. Her features, her present aris- 
tocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him ; her 
character would submit to moulding. Of all young ladies 
in the world, she should be the one to shrink from a mental 
independence and hold to the guidance of the man ennobling 
her. Did she ? Her eyes were reading him. She had her 


A PAIR OF WOOERS 


335 


father’s limpid eyes, and when they concentrated rays, they 
shot. 

Have you seen my parents, Mr. Sowerby ? ” 

He answered smilingly, for reassuringly : I have seen 
them.” 

My mother ? ” 

From your mother first. But am I not to be Dudley ? ” 

She spoke to you ? She told you ? ” 

^^And yesterday your father — a second time.” 

Some remainder of suspicion in the dealing with members 
of this family, urged Dudley to say : I understood from 
them, you were not ? . . . that you were quite ? . . . ” 

I have heard : I have guessed : it was recently — this 
morning, as it happened. I wish to go to my mother to-day. 
I shall go to her to-morrow.” 

I might offer to conduct you — now ! ” 

^^You are kind; I have Skepsey.” She relieved the 
situation of its cold-toned strain in adding : He is a 
host.” 

But I may come ? — now ! Have I not the right ? 
You do not deny it me ? ” 

You are very generous.” 

claim the right, then. Always. And subsequently, 
soon after, my mother hopes to welcome you at Cronidge. 
She will be glad to hear of your naming of a day. My 
father bids me ... he and all our family.” 

They are very generous.” 

may send them word this evening of a day you 
name ? ” 

Mr. Sowerby.” 

Dudley ? ” 

cannot say it. I have to see my parents.” 

Between us, surely ? ” 

^^My whole heart thanks you for your goodness to me. 
I am unable to say more.” 

He had again observed and he slightly crisped under the 
speculative look she directed on him : a simple unstrained 
look, that had an air of reading right in, and was worse to 
bear with than when the spark leaped upon so;ne thought 
from her eyes : though he had no imagination of anything 
he concealed or exposed, and he would have set it down to 


336 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


her temporary incredulousness of his perfect generosity or 
power to overcome the world’s opinion of certain circum- 
stances. That had been a struggle ! The peculiar look was 
not renewed. She spoke warmly of her gratitude. She 
stated, that she must of necessity see her parents at once. 
She submitted to his entreaty to conduct her to them on 
the morrow. It was in the manner of one who yielded 
step by step, from inability to contend. 

Her attitude continuing unchanged, he became sensible 
of a monotony in the speech with which he assailed it, and 
he rose to leave, not dissatisfied. She, at his urgent request, 
named her train for London in the early morning. He said 
it was not too early. He would have desired to be warmed ; 
yet he liked her the better for the moral sentiment con- 
trolling the physical. He had appointments with relatives 
or connections in the town, and on that pretext he departed, 
hoping for the speedy dawn of the morrow as soon as he 
had turned his back on the house. 

No, not he the man to have pity of women underfoot ! — 
That was the thought, unrevolved, unphrased, all but un- 
conscious, in Nesta : and while her heart was exalting him 
for his generosity. Under her present sense of the chilling 
shadow, she felt the comfort there was in being grateful to 
him for the golden beams which his generosity cast about 
her. But she had an intelligence sharp to pierce, virgin 
though she was ; and with the mark in sight, however 
distant, she struck it, unerring as an Artemis for blood of 
beasts : those shrewd young wits, on the look-out to find a 
champion, athirst for help upon a desolate road, were hard 
as any judicial to pronounce the sentence upon Dudley in 
that respect. She raised him high ; she placed herself low ; 
she had a glimpse of the struggle he had gone through; 
love of her had helped him, she believed. And she was 
melted ; and not the less did the girl’s implacable intuition 
read with the keenness of eye of a man of the world the 
blunt division in him, where warm humanity stopped short 
at the wall of social concrete forming a part of this rightly 
esteemed young citizen. She, too, was divided : she was at 
his feet ; and she rebuked herself for daring to judge — or 
rather, it was, for having a reserve in her mind upon a man 
proving so generous with her. She was pulled this way 


A PAIR OF \TOOEBS 


337 


and that by sensibilities both inspiring to blind gratitude 
and quickening her penetrative view. The certainty of an 
unerring perception remained. 

Dorothea and Virginia were seated in the room below, 
waiting for their carriage, when the hall-door spoke of the 
Hon. Dudley^s departure ; soon after, Hesta entered to 
them. She swam up to Dorothea’s lap, and dropped her 
head on it, kneeling. 

The ladies feared she might be weeping. Dorothea 
patted her thick brown twisted locks of hair. Unhappiness 
following such an interview; struck them as an ill sign. 

Virginia bent to the girl’s ear, and murmured: ^^All 
well ? ” 

She replied: He has been very generous.” 

Her speaking of the words renewed an oppression that 
had darkened her on the descent of stairs. For sensibilities 
sharp as Nesta’s, are not to be had without their penalties : 
and she who had gone nigh to summing in a flash the 
nature of Dudley, sank suddenly under that affliction often 
besetting the young adventurous mind, crushing to young 
women : — the fascination exercised upon them by a positive 
adverse masculine attitude and opinion. Young men know 
well what it is : and if young women have by chance over- 
come their timidity, to the taking of any step out of the 
trim pathway, they shrink, with a sense of forlornest isola- 
tion. It becomes a subjugation; inciting to revolt, but a 
heavy weight to cast oft. Soon it assumed its material 
form for the contention between her and Dudley, in the 
figure of Mrs. Marsett. The FTesta who had been instructed 
to know herself to be under a shadow, heard, she almost 
justified Dudley’s reproaches to her, for having made the 
acquaintance of the unhappy woman, for having visited her, 
for having been, though but for a minute, at the mercy of 
a coarse gentleman’s pursuit. The recollection was a smart 
buffet. 

Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring 
of Dudley’s words, should news of her relations with Mrs. 
Marsett reach him: — and she would have to tell him. 
Would he not say: ^Hhave borne with the things concerning 
your family. All the greater reason why I must insist . . .” 
he would assuredly say he insisted (her humour caught at 

22 


338 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEEOES 


the word, as being the very word one could foresee and 
clearly see him uttering in a fit of vehemence) on her im- 
mediate abandonment of “that woman.’’ 

And with ISTesta’s present enlightenment by dusky beams, 
upon her parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley, or the 
opinion of the majority. Would he not say or think, that her 
clinging to Mrs. Marsett put them under a kind of common 
stamp, or gave the world its option to class them together ? 

These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined 
to. be a battle-field for the enrichment of a harvest-field of 
them, while the girhs face was hidden on Dorothea’s lap, 
and her breast heaved and heaved. 

She distressed them wlien she rose, by saying she must 
instantly see her mother. 

They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea 
said: “Yes, dear; any day you like.” 

“ To-morrow — I must go to her to-morrow ! ” 

A suggestion of her mother’s coming down, was faintly 
spoken by one lady, echoed in a quaver by the other. 

Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she en- 
treated them to give their promise that they would invite 
her again. 

Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both 
ladies embraced her : not entirely yielding-up their hearts 
to her, by reason of the pernicious new ideas now in the 
world to sap our foundations of morality ; which warned 
them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite justifiable 
behaviour, even when compassionating the sufferings of the 
guiltless creature loved by them. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF 
FEELINGS 

All through the afternoon and evening Skepsey showed 
indifference to meals by continuing absent : and he was the . 
one with whom Nesta would have felt at home ; more at 
home than with her parents. He and the cool world he 


EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS 


339 


moved in were a transparency of peace to her mind ; even 
to his giving of some portion of it, when she had the dear 
little man present to her in a vivid image of a fish in a glass- 
globe, wandering round and round, now and then shooting 
across, just as her Skepsey did : he carried his head semi- 
horizontally at his arrowy pace ; plain to read though he 
was, he appeared, under that image created of him, animated 
by motives inducing to speculation. 

She thought of him till she could have reproached him 
for not returning and helping her to get away from the 
fever of other thoughts : — this anguish twisting about her 
parents, and the dreadful trammels of gratitude to a man 
afflictingly generous, the frown of congregated people. 

The latter was the least of evils ; she had her charges to 
bring against them for injustice : uncited, unstirred charges, 
they were effective as a muffled force to sustain her : and 
the young who are of healthy lively blood and clean con- 
science have either emotion or imagination to fold them de- 
fensively from an enemy world ; whose power to drive them 
forth into the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the 
wilderness their souls are not beaten down by breath of 
mortals; they burn straight flame there up to the parent 
Spirit. 

She could not fancy herself flying thither ; — where to 
be shorn and naked and shivering is no hardship, for the 
solitude clothes, and the sole true life in us resolves to that 
steady flame ; — she was restrained by Dudley’s generosity, 
which held her fast to have the forgiveness for her uncom^ 
mitted sin dashed in her face. He surprised her ; the un- 
expected quality in him seemed suddenly to have snared 
her fast : and she did not obtain release after seeing behind 
it; — seeing it, by the light of what she demanded, per- 
sonal, shallow, a lover’s generosity. So her keen intellect 
saw it; and her young blood (for the youthful are thus 
divided) thrilled in thinking it must be love ! The name 
of the sacred passion lifted it out of the petty cabin of the 
individual into a quiring cathedral universal, and subdued 
her. It subdued her with an unwelcome touch of tender- 
ness when she thought of it as involving tenderness for her 
mother, some chivalrous respect for her mother. Could he 
love the daughter without some little, which a more inti- 


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mate knowledge of her dear mother would enlarge ? The 
girl’s heart flew to her mother, clung to her, vindicated her 
dumbly. It would not inquire, and it refused to hear, 
hungering the while. She sent forth her flights of stories 
in elucidation of the hidden ; and they were like white bird 
after bird winging to covert beneath a thundercloud ; until 
her breast ached for the voice of the thunder : harsh facts : 
sure as she was of her never losing her filial hold of the 
beloved. She and her mother grew together, they were 
one. Accepting the shadow, they were the closer one be- 
neath it. She had neither vision nor active thought of her 
father, in whom her pride was. 

At the hour of ten, the ladies retired for the enjoyment 
of their sweet reward. Manton, their maid, came down to 
sit with Nesta on the watch for Skepsey. Perrin, the foot- 
man, returning, as late as twenty minutes to eleven, from 
his tobacco promenade along the terrace, reported to Manton 

a row in town ; ” and he repeated to hTesta the police- 
man’s opinion and his own of the Army ” fellows, and the 
way to treat them. Both were for rigour. 

The name of ^ Army ’ attracts poor Skepsey so, I am sure 
he would join it, if they would admit him,” Nesta said. 

^^He has an immense respect for a young woman, who 
belongs to his ^ Army ; ’ and one does n’t know what may 
have come,” said Manton. 

Two or three minutes after eleven, a feeble ring at the 
bell gained admission for some person : whispering was 
heard in the passage. Manton played eavesdropper, and 
suddenly bursting on Skepsey, arrested him when about to 
dash upstairs. His young mistress’s voice was a sufficient 
command ; he yielded ; he pitched a smart sigh and stepped 
into her presence for his countenance to be seen, or the 
show of a countenance, that it presented. 

Skepsey wanted to rush to bed without saying good 
night to me?” said she; leaving unnoticed, except for 
woefulness of tone, his hurried shuffie of remarks on ‘Hiis 
appearance,” and little accidents ; ” ending with an in- 
clination of his disgraceful person to the doorway, and a 
petition : If I might, Miss Nesta ? ” The implied pathetic 
reference to a surgically-treated nose under a cross of strips 
of plaster, could not obtain dismissal for him. And he had 


EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS 


341 


one eye of sinister hue, showing beside its lighted-grey 
fellow as if a sullen punished dragon-whelp had couched 
near some quick wood-pigeon. The two eyes blinked rap- 
idly. He was a picture of Guilt in the nude, imploring to 
be sent into concealment. 

The cruelty of detaining him was evident. 

^^Yes, if you must,’^ Nesta said. ‘^But, dear Skepsey, 
will it be the magistrate again to-morrow ? 

He feared it would be ; he fancied it would needs be. He 
concluded by stating, that he was bound to appear before 
the magistrate in the morning ; and he begged assistance to 
keep it from the knowledge of the Miss Duvidneys, who had 
been so kind to him. 

Has there been bailing of you again, Skepsey ? 

A good gentleman, a resident,’’ he replied ; a military 
gentleman ; indeed, a colonel of the cavalry ; but, it may so 
be, retired ; and anxious about our vast possessions ; though 
he thinks a translation of a French attack on England un- 
important. He says, the Germans despise us most.” 

Then this gentleman thinks you have a good case ? ” 

He is a friend of Captain Dartrey’s.” 

Hearing that name, Nesta said : How, Skepsey, you must 
tell me everything. You are not to mind your looks. I 
believe, I do always believe you mean well.” 

Miss Hesta, it depends upon the magistrate’s not being 
prejudiced against the street-processionists.” 

^^But you may expect justice from the magistrate, if your 
case is good ? ” 

I would not say no. Miss Hesta. But we find, the opinion 
of the public has its effect with magistrates — their sen- 
tences. They are severe on boxing. They have latterly 
treated the ^ Army ’ with more consideration, owing to the 
change in the public view. I myself have changed.” 

Have you joined it? ” 

I cannot say I am a member of it.” 

You walked in the ranks to-day, and you were mal- 
treated ? Your friend was there ? ” 

I walked with Matilda Pridden ; that is, parallel, along 
the pavement.” 

I hope she came out of it unhurt ? ” 

It is thanks to Captain Dartrey, Miss Hesta.” 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


This time Nesta looked her question. 

Mantoii interposed: You are to speak, Mr. Skepsey ; 
and she stopped a flood of narrative, that was knocking in 
his mind to feel its head and to leap — an uninterrupted 
half-minute more would have shaped the story for the 
proper flow. 

He began, after attending to the throb of his bruises in a 
manner to correct them rather than solace ; and the begin- 
ning was the end : “ Captain Dartrey rescued us, before 
Matilda Pridden suffered harm, to mention — the chin, slight, 
teeth unshaken; a beautiful set. She is angry with Captain 
Dartrey, for having recourse to violence in her defence : it is 
against her principles. ^ Then you die,’ she says ; and our 
principles are to gain more by death. She says, we are alive 
in them ; but worse if we abandon them for the sake of 
living. — I am a little confused; she is very abstruse. — 
Because, that is the corruptible life, she says. I have found 
it quite impossible to argue with her; she has always a 
complete answer ; wonderful. In case of Invasion, we are 
to lift our voices to the Lord ; and the Lord’s will shall be 
manifested. If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by the 
goods ? It is unreasonable ; it strikes at rights of property. 
But I have to go on thinking. When in danger, she sings 
without excitement. When the blow struck her, she stopped 
singing only an instant. She says, no one fears, who has 
real faith. She will not let me call her brave. She cannot 
admire Captain Dartrey. Her principles are opposed. She 
said to him, ‘ Sir, you did what seemed to you right.’ She 
thinks every blow struck sends us back to the state of the 
beasts. Her principles . . .” 

How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present, 
Skepsey ? ” ! 

She is very firm. You cannot move her. — Captain ; 
Dartrey was on his way to the station, to meet a gentleman ’ 

from London, Miss Kesta. He carried a stick — a remark- ; 

able stick — he had shown to me in the morning, and he has \ 
given it me now. He says, he has done his last with it. ; 

He seems to have some of Matilda Pridden’s ideas about j 

fighting, when it ’s over. He was glad to be rid of the j 
stick, he said.” 

But who attacked you ? What were the people ? ” 


EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS 


343 


Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head 
while she breeds young women like Matilda Pridden : — right 
or wrong, he says : it is the substance.’^ 

Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little 
man with a snappish word, to bring him to attention. She 
got him together sufficiently for him to give a lame version 
of the story ; flat until he came to his heroine’s behaviour, 
when he brightened a moment, and he sank back absorbed 
in her principles and theories of life. It was understood by 
Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace, found 
their way blocked and were assaulted in one of the side- 
streets ; and that Skepsey rushed to the defence of Matilda 
Pridden ; and that, while they were engaged. Captain Dartrey 
was passing at the end of the street, and recognized one he 
knew in the thick of it and getting the worst of it, owing to 
numbers. I will show you the stick he did it with. Miss 
Nesta,” said Skepsey, regardless of narrative ; and darted 
out of the room to bring in the Demerara supple-jack ; 
holding which, he became inspired to relate something of 
Captain Dartrey’s deeds. 

They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly 
perceived : — thus it is with the fair sex ever, so fond of 
heroes ! She shut her eyes from the sight of the Demerara 
supple-jack descending right and left upon the skulls of a 
couple of bully lads. That will do — you were rescued. 
And now go to bed, Skepsey ; and be up at seven to break- 
fast with me,” Nesta said, for his battle-damaged face would 
be more endurable to behold after an interval, she hoped ; 
and she might in the morning dissociate its evil look from 
the deeds of Captain Dartrey. 

The thought of her hero taking active part in a street- 
fray, was repulsive to her ; it swamped his brilliancy. And 
this distressed her, by withdrawing the support which the 
thought of him had been to her since midday. She lay for 
sleepless hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under oppres- 
sion of repugnance to battle-dealing, blood-shedding men. 
It was long before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the 
moan recurring whenever reflection wearied. Translated 
into speech, it would have run : In a street of the town ! 
with a stick ! ” — The vulgar picture pursued her to humilia- 
tion ; it robbed her or dimmed her possession of the one 


344 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


bright thing she had remaining to her. So she deemed it 
during the heavy sighs of night ; partly conscious, that in 
some strange way it was as much as tossing her to the man 
who never could have condescended to the pugnacious using 
of a stick in a street. He, on the contrary, was a cover to 
the shame-faced. 

Her heart was weak that night. She hovered above it, 
but not so detached as to scorn it for fawning to one — any 
one — who would offer her and her mother a cover from 
scorn. And now she exalted Dudley’s generosity, now 
clung to a low idea of a haven in her father’s wealth; and 
she was unaware, that the second mood was deduced from 
the first. She did know herself cowardly : she had, too, a 
critic in her clear head, to spurn at the creature who could 
think of purchasing the world’s respect. Dudley’s gener- 
osity sprang up to silence the voice. She could praise him, 
on a review of it, for delicacy, moreover ; and the delicacy 
laid her under a more positive obligation. Her sense of it 
was not without a toneless quaint faint savour of the 
romantic, that her humour little humorously caught at, to 
paint her a picture of former heroes of fiction, who win 
their trying lady by their perfection of good conduct on a 
background of high birth ; and who are not seen to be 
wooden before the volume closes. Her fatigue of sleepless- 
ness plunged her into the period of poke-bonnets and peaky 
hats to admire him ; giving her the kind of sweetness we 
may imagine ourselves to get in the state of tired horse 
munching hay. If she had gone to her bed with a noble 
or simply estimable plain image of one of her friends in her 
heart, to sustain it, she would not have been thus abject. 
Skepsey’s discoloured eye, and Captain Dartrey’s behaviour 
behind it, threw her upon Dudley’s generosity, as being the 
shield for an outcast. Girls, who see at a time of need their 
ideal extinguished in its appearing tarnished, are very mucli 
at the disposal of the pressing suitor. Nesta rose in the 
black winter morn, summoning the best she could think of 
to glorify Dudley, that she might not feel so doomed. 

According to an agreement overnight, she went to the 
bedroom of Dorothea and Virginia, to assure them of her 
having slept well, and say the good-bye to them and their 
Tasso. The little dog was the growl of a silken ball in 


EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS 


345 


a basket. His mistresses excused him, because of his 
being unused to the appearance of any person save Manton 
in their bedroom. Dorothea, kissing her, said : Adieu, 
dear child ; and there is home with us always, remember. 
And, after breakfast, however it may be, you will, for our 
greater feeling of security, have — she has our orders — 
Manton — your own maid we consider too young for a 
guardian — to accompany you. We will not have it on 
our consciences, that by any possibility harm came to you 
while you were under our charge. The good innocent girl 
we received from the hand of your father, we return to 
him ; we are sure of that.’’ 

Nesta said : Mr. Sowerby promised he would come.” 

However it may be,” Dorothea repeated her curtaining 
phrase. 

Virginia put in a word of apology for Tasso’s temper : 
he enjoyed ordinarily a slumber of half an hour’s longer 
duration. He was, Dorothea feelingly added, regularity 
itself. Virginia murmured : Except once ! ” and both 
were appalled by the recollection of that night. It had, 
nevertheless, caused them to reperuse the Rev. Stuart 
Rem’s published beautiful sermon Ox Dirt ; the words of 
which were an antidote to the night of Tasso in the nostrils 
of Mnemosyne ; so that Dorothea could reply to her sister, 
slightly by way of a reproval, quoting Mr. Stuart Rem at 
his loftiest : ‘ Let us not bring into the sacred precincts 

Dirt from the roads, but have a care to. spread it where it 
is a fructification.’ ” Virginia produced the sequent sen- 
tence, likewise weighty. N'esta stood between the thin 
division of their beds, her right hand given to one, her 
left to the other. They had the semblance of a haven out 
of storms. 

She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that 
the residing with them had been a means of casting her — 
it was an effort to remember how — upon the world where 
the tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten; and she 
might be the worse for it ; but she was raised to a height 
that would not let her look with envy upon peace and com- 
fort. Luxurious quiet people were as ripening glass-house 
fruits. Her bitter gathering of the knowledge of life had 
sharpened her intellect ; and the intellect, even in the 


346 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


young, is, and not less usefully, hard metal rather than 
fallow soil. But for the fountain of human warmth at her 
breast, she might have been snared by the conceit of intel- 
lect, to despise the simple and conventional, or shed the 
pity which is charity’s contempt. She had only to think 
of the kindness of the dear good ladies ; her heart jumped 
to them at once. And when she fancied hearing those 
innocent souls of women embracing her nnd reproaching 
her for the knowledge of life she now bore, her words 
down deep in her bosom were : It has helped me to bear 
the shock of other knowledge ! How would she have 
borne it before she knew of the infinitely evil ? Saving 
for the tender compassion weeping over her mother, she 
had not much acute personal grief. 

For this world condemning her birth, was the world 
tolerant of that infinitely evil ! Her intellect fortified her 
to be combative by day, after the night of imagination ; 
which splendid power is not so serviceable as the logical 
mind in painful seasons : for night revealed the world snort- 
ing Dragon’s breath at a girl guilty of knowing its vilest. 
More than she liked to recall, it had driven her scorched, 
half withered, to the shelter of Dudley. The daylight, 
spreading thin at the windows, restored her from that 
weakness. We will quit England,” she said, thinking of 
her mother and herself, and then of her father’s surely 
following them. She sighed thankfully, half way through 
the breakfast with Skepsey, at sight of the hour by the 
clock ; she was hurriedly sentient of the puzzle of her 
feelings, when she guessed at a chance that Dudley would 
be delayed. She supposed herself as possibly feeling not 
so well able to keep every thought of her head brooding 
on her mother in Dudley’s company. 

Skepsey’s face was just sufferable by light of day, if one 
pitied reflecting on his honest intentions ; it ceased to dis- 
colour another. He dropped a few particulars of his hero 
in action ; but the heroine eclipsed. He was heavier than 
ever with his Matilda Pridden. At the hour for departure, 
Perrin had a conveyance at the door. Nesta sent off 
Skepsey with a complimentary message to Captain Dartrey. 
Her maid Mary begged her to finish her breakfast ; Manton 
suggested the waiting a further two or three minutes. 


EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS 


347 


must not be late/^ Nesta said; and when the minute- 
hand of the clock marked ample time for the drive to the 
station, she took her seat and started, keeping her face 
resolutely set seaward, having at her ears the ring of a cry 
that was to come from Manton. But Man ton was dumb ; 
she spied no one on the pavement who signalled to stop 
them. And no one was at the station to greet them. They 
stepped into a carriage where they were alone. Dudley 
with his dreaded generosity melted out of Nesta^s thoughts, 
like the vanishing steam-wreath on the dip between the 
line and the downs. 

She passed into music, as she always did under motion 
of carriages and trains, whether in happiness or sadness: 
and the day being one that had a sky, the scenic of music 
swung her up to soar. ISTone of her heavy burdens en- 
chained, though she knew the weight of them, with those 
of other painful souls. The pipeing at her breast gave 
wings to large and small of the visible ; and along the 
downs went stateliest of flowing dances ; a copse lengthened 
to forest ; a pool of cattle-water caught gray for flights 
through enchantment. Cottage-children, wherever seen in 
groups, she wreathed above with angels to watch them. 
Her mind all the while was busy upon earth, embracing 
her mother, eyeing her father. Imagination and our earthly 
met midway, and still she flew, until she was brought to the 
ground by a shot. She struggled to rise, uplifting Judith 
Marsett : a woman not so very much older than her own 
teens, in the count of years, and ages older ; and the world 
pulling at her heels to keep her low. That unhappiest had 
no one but a sisterly girl to help her : and how she clung 
to the slender help ! Who else was there ?, 

The good and the bad in the woman struck separate blows 
upon the girl’s resonant nature. She perceived the good, 
and took it into her reflections. The bad she divined : it 
approached like some threat of inflammation. Natures 
resonant as that which animated this girl, are quick at the 
wells of understanding : and she had her intimations of the 
world’s wisdom in withholding contagious presences from 
the very many of the young, who may not have an aim, or 
ideal or strong human compassion, for a preservative. She 
was assured of her possessing it. She asked heraelf in her 


348 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


mother’s voice, and answered mutely. She had the cer- 
tainty : for she rebuked the slavish feverishness of the 
passion, as betrayed by Mrs. Marsett ; and the woman’s 
tone, as of strung wires ringing on a rage of the wind. 
Then followed her cry for the man who would speak to 
Captain Marsett of his duty in honour. An image of one, 
accompanying the faster beats of her heart, beguiled her to 
think away from the cause. He, the one man known to 
her, would act the brother’s part on behalf of the hapless 
creature. 

Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at 
once imagination came to dust. She had to thank him : 
she knelt to him. For the first time of her life she found 
herself seized with her sex’s shudder in the blood. 


CHAPTEE XXXV 

IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD LAMPS 
FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL DARKNESS 

And if Xesta had looked out of her carriage-window soon 
after the train began to glide, her eagle of imagination 
would have reeled from the heights, with very different 
feelings, earlier, perhaps a captive, at sight of the tardy 
gentleman rushing along the platform, and bending ear to 
the footman Perrin, and staring for one lost. 

The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an appre- 
hension of the ominous in his having missed her. It wound 
away, and left regrets, which raised a chorus of harsh 
congratulations from the opposite party of his internal 
parliament. 

Neither party could express an opinion without rousing 
the other to an uproar. 

He had met his cousin Southweare overnight. He had 
heard that there was talk of Miss Radnor. Her name was 
in the mouth of Major Worrell. It was coupled with the 
name of Mrs. Marsett. A military captain, in the succession 
to be Sir Edward Marsett, bestowed on her the shadow of 
his name. 


OLD LAMPS FOP LIGHTING A DARKNESS 349 

It could be Sertified that Miss Eadnor visited the woman 
at her house. What are we to think of Miss Eadnor, save 
that daughters of depraved parents! ... A. torture un- 
deserved is the Centaur’s shirt for driving us to lay about 
in all directions. He who had swallowed so much — a 
thunderbolt: a still undigested discharge from the perplex- 
ing heavens — jumped frantic under the pressure upon him 
of more, and worse. A girl getting herself talked of at a 
Club ! And she of all young ladies should have been the 
last to draw round her that buzz of tongues. On such a 
subject ! — The parents pursuing their career of cynical 
ostentation in London, threw an evil eye of heredity on 
their offspring in the egg; making anything credible, 
pointing at tendencies. 

An alliance with her was impossible. So said disgust. 
Anger came like a stronger beast, and extinguished the 
safety there was in the thing it consumed, by growing so 
excessive as to require tempering with drops of compassion; 
which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgive- 
ness ; and the moment that was conceived, he had a passion 
to commit the horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand 
scale, and dissolved his heart in the grandeur, and enslaved 
himself again. 

Far from expungeing the doubt of her, forgiveness gave 
it a stamp and an edge. His renewed enslavement set him 
perusing his tyrant keenly, as nauseated captives do ; and 
he saw that forgiveness was beside the case. For this Hesta 
Victoria Eadnor would not crave it or accept it. He had 
mentally played the woman to her superior vivaciousness 
too long for him to see her taking a culprit’s attitude. 
What she did, she intended to do. The mother would not 
have encouraged her. The father idolized her; and the 
father was a frank hedonist, whose blood . . . speculation 
on horseback gallops to barren extremes. Eyes like hers 
— if there had not been the miserable dupes of girls I 
Conduct is the sole guide to female character. That like- 
wise may be the hypocrite’s mask. 

Popular artists, intent to gratify the national taste for 
effects called realistic, have figured in scenes of battle the 
raying fragments of a man from impact of a cannon-ball on 
his person. Truly thus it may be when flesh contends. 


350 


ONE OF OJJR CONQUEEOBS 


But an image of the stricken and scattered mind of the man 
should, though deficient in the attraction, have a greater 
significance, for as much as it does not exhibit him entirely 
liquefied and showered into space ; it leaves him his legs for 
the taking of further steps. Dudley, standing on the plat- 
form of JSTesta’s train, one half minute too late, according to 
his desire before he put himself in motion, was as wildly 
torn as the vapour shredded streaming to fingers and threads 
off the upright columnar shot of the shriek from the boiler. 
He wished every mad antagonism to his wishes : that he 
might see her, be blind to her ; embrace, discard ; heal his 
wound, and tear it wider. He thanked her for the grossness 
of an offence precluding excuses. He was aware of a 
glimmer of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjured- 
up her features, and they said, her innocence was the 
sinner ; they scoffed at him for the dupe he was willing to 
be. She had enigma’s mouth, with the eyes of morning. 

More than most girls, she was the girl-Sphinx to him : 
because of her having ideas — or what he deemed ideas. 
She struck a toneing warmth through his intelligence, not 
dissimilar to the livelier circulation of the blood in the 
frame breathing mountain air. She really helped him, 
incited him to go along with this windy wild modern time 
more cheerfully, if not quite hopefully. For she had been 
the book of Komance he despised when it appeared as a 
printed volume : and which might have educated the young 
man to read some among our riddles in the book of humanity. 
The white he was ready to take for silver : the black were 
all black ; the spotted had received corruption’s label. Her 
youthful French governess Mademoiselle de Seilles was also 
peculiarly enigmatic at the mouth : conversant, one might 
expect, with the disintegrating literature of her country. 
In public, the two talked of St. Louis. One of them in 
secret visits a Mrs. Marsett. The Southweare women, the 
Hennen women, and Lady Evelina Keddish, were artless 
candid creatures in their early days, not transgressing in a 
glance. Lady Grace Halley had her fit of the devotional 
previous to marriage. 'No girl known to Dudley by report 
or acquaintance had committed so scandalous an indiscretion 
as Miss Badnor’s : it pertained to the insolently vile. 

And on that ground, it started the voluble defence. For 


OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING A DARKNESS 351 

certain suspected things will dash suspicion to the rebound, 
when they are very dark. As soon as the charge against 
her was moderated, the defence expired. He heard the 
world delivering its judgement upon her; and he sorrow- 
fully acquiesced. She passed from him. 

When she was cut off, she sang him in the distance a 
remembered saying of hers, with the full melody of her 
voice. One day, treating of modern Pessimism, he had 
draped a cadaverous view of our mortal being in a quotation 
of the wisdom of the Philosopher Emperor: ^^To set one’s 
love upon the swallow is a futility.” And she, weighing it, 
nodded, and replied : May not the pleasure for us remain 
if we set our love upon the beauty of the swallow’s flight ? ” 

There was, for a girl, a bit of idea, real idea, in that: 
meaning, of course, the picture we are to have of the bird’s 
wings in motion; — it has often been admired. Oh! not 
much of an idea in itself: — feminine and vague. But it 
was pertinent, opportune; in this way she stimulated. 

And the girl who could think it, and call on a Mrs. Mar- 
sett, was of the class of mixtures properly to be handed 
over to chemical experts for analysis 1 

She had her aspirations on behalf of her sex : she and 
Mademoiselle de Seilles discussed them; women were to 
do this, do that : — necessarily a means of instructing a girl 
to learn what they did do. If the lower part of her face 
had been as reassuring to him as the upper, he might have 
put a reluctant faith in the puremindedness of these as- 
pirations, without reverting to her origin, and also to re- 
cent rumours of her father and Lady Grace Halley. As it 
was, he inquired of the cognizant, whether an intellectual 
precocity, devoted by preference to questions affecting the 
state of women, did not rather more than suggest the exist- 
ence of urgent senses likewise. She, a girl under twenty, 
had an interest in public matters, and she called on a Mrs. 
Marsett. To plead her simplicity, was to be absolutely 
ignorant of her. 

He neighboured sagacity when he pointed that interroga- 
tion relating to iN'esta’s precociousness of the intelligence. 
Eor, as they say in dactylomancy, the psychical ” of wo- 
men are not disposed in their sensitive early days to dwell 
upon the fortunes of their sex : a thought or two turns them 


352 


OF OtTE. CONQUEEOKS 


facing away, with the repugnant shiver. They worship at a 
niche in the wall. They cannot avoid imputing some share 
of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber ; and 
the civilized male, keeping his own chamber locked, quite 
shares their pale taper’s view. The full-blooded to the 
finger-tips, on the other hand, are likely to be drawn to the 
subject, by noble inducement as often as by base : Nature 
at fiood being the cause in either instance. This young 
Nature of the good and the bad, is the blood which runs to 
power of heart as well as to thirsts of the flesh. Then 
have men to sound themselves, to discover how much of 
Nature their abstract honourable conception or representa- 
tive eidolon of young women will bear without going to 
pieces ; and it will not be much, unless they shall have 
taken instruction from the poet’s pen: — for a view pos- 
sibly of Nature at work to cast the slough, when they see 
her writhing as in her ugliest old throes. If they have 
learnt of Nature’s priest to respect her, they will less dis- 
trust those rare daughters of hers who are moved by her 
warmth to lift her out of slime. It is by her own live 
warmth that it has to be done : cold worship at a niche in 
the wall will not do it. — Well, there is an index, for the 
enlargement of your charity. 

But facts were Dudley’s teachers. Physically, morally, 
mentally, he read the world through facts ; — that is to say, 
through the facts he encountered : and he was in conse- 
quence foredoomed to a succession of bumps ; all the heavier 
from his being, unlike the horned kind, not unimpressible 
by the hazy things outside his experience. Even at his 
darkest over Nesta, it was his indigestion of the misconduct 
of her parents, which denied to a certain still small advocate 
within him the right to raise a voice : that good fellow 
struck the attitude for pleading, and had to be silent ; for 
he was Instinct ; at best a stammering speaker in the Court 
of the wigged Facts. Instinct of this Nesta Radnor’s char- 
acter would have said a brave word, but for her deeds bear- 
ing witness to her inheritance of a lawlessly adventurous 
temperament. 

What to do ? He was no nearer to an answer when the 
wintry dusk had fallen on the promenading crowds. To do 
nothing, is the wisdom of those who have seen fools perish. 


OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING A DARKNESS 853 

Facts had not taught him, that the doing nothing, for a 
length of days after the first shock he sustained, was the 
reason of how it came that Nesta knitted closer her acquaint* 
ance with the agreeable lady she mentioned in her letter 
to Cronidge. Those excellent counsellors of a mercantile 
community gave him no warnings, that the masterly in* 
active part, so greatly esteemed by him for the conduct of 
public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid 
girl : nor a hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is 
because the sensations are as violent as hysterical females 
to block them from the understanding. His Fobin Good- 
fellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a crux of his medi- 
tations, where Edith AversFs consumptive brothers waved 
faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. Superb 
for the chances : but what of her offspring ? And the 
other was a girl such as the lusty Dame Dowager of fighting 
ancestors would have signalled to the heir of the House’s 
honours for the perpetuation of his race. Ho doubt : and 
the venerable Dame (beautiful in her old-lace frame, or say 
foliage, of the Ages backward, temp: Ed: III.) inflated 
him with a thought of her: and his readings in modern 
books on heredity, pure blood, physical regeneration, pro- 
nounced approval of Hesta Radnor : and thereupon instinct 
opened mouth to speak ; and a lockjaw seized it under that 
scowl of his presiding mistrust of Hature. 

He clung to his mistrust the more because of a warning 
he had from the silenced natural voice : somewhat as we 
may behold how the Conservatism of a Class, in a world of 
all the evidences showing that there is no stay to things, 
comes of the intuitive discernment of its finality. His mis- 
trust was his own ; and Hesta was not ; not yet ; though a 
step would make her his own. Instinct prompting to the 
step, was a worthless adviser. It spurred him, nevertheless. 

He called at the Club for his cousin Southweare, with 
whom he was not in sympathy; and had information that, 
Southweare said, made the girl out all right. ” Girls in 
these days do things which the sainted stay-at-homes pre- 
ceding them would not have dreamed of doing. Something 
had occurred, relating to Major Worrell : he withdrew Miss 
Radno'r’s name, acknowledged himself mistaken or amended 
his report of her, in some way, not quite intelligible. Dudley 

23 


354 


ONE OF OtTB CONQUEROKS 


was accosted by Simeon Fenellan ; subsequently by Dartrey. 
There was gossip over the latter gentleman’s having been 
up before the magistrate, talk of a queer kind of stick, and 
Dartrey said, laughing, to Simeon : Eather lucky I bled the 
rascal ; ” — whatever the meaning. She nursed one of her 
adorations for this man, who had yesterday, apparently, 
joined in a street-fray ; so she partook of the stain of the 
turbid defacing all these disorderly people. 

At his hotel, at breakfast the next morning, a newspaper 
furnished an account of Captain Dartrey Fenellan’s partici- 
pation in the strife, after mention of him as nephew of the 
Earl of Clanconan, now a visitor to our town ; ” and his 
deeds were accordant with his birth. Such w^riting was 
enough to send Dudley an eager listener to Colney Durance. 
What a people ! 

Mr. Dartrey Fenellan’s card compelled Dudley presently 
to receive him. 

Dartrey, not debarred by considerations that an allusion 
to Miss Kadnor could be conveyed only in the most delicately 
obscure manner, spared him no more than the plain English 
of his relations with her. Eequested to come to the Club, 
at a certain hour of the afternoon, that he might hear Major 
Worrell’s personal contradiction of scandal involving the 
young lady’s name, together with his apology, etc., Dudley 
declined : and he was obliged to do it curtly ; words were 
wanting. They are hard to find for wounded sentiments 
rendered complex by an infusion of policy. His present 
mood, with the something new to digest, held the going to 
Major Worrell a wrong step ; he behaved as if the speaking 
to Dartrey Fenellan pledged him hardly less. And besides 
he had a physical abhorrence, under dictate of moral repro- 
bation, of the broad-shouldered sinewy man, whose look of 
wiry alertness pictured the previous day’s gory gutters. 

Dartrey set sharp eyes on him for an instant, bowed, and 
went. 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


855 


CHAPTER XXXVI 

NESTA AND HER FATHER 

The day of Xesta’s return was one of a number of late 
when Victor was robbed of his walk Westward by Lady 
Grace Halley, who seduced his politeness with her various 
forms of blandishment to take a seat in her carriage ; and 
she was a practical speaker upon her quarter of the world 
when she had him there. Perhaps she was right in saying 
— though she had no right to say — that he and she together 
might have the world under their feet. It was one of those 
irritating suggestions which expedite us up to a bald ceiling, 
only to make us feel the gas-bladdePs tight extension upon 
emptiness. It moved him to examine the poor value of his 
aim, by tying him to the contemptible means. One estimate 
involved the other, whichever came first. Somewhere he 
had an idea, that would lift and cleanse all degradations. 
But it did seem as if he were not enjoying : things pleasant 
enough in the passage of them were barren, if not prickly, 
in the retrospect. 

He sprang out at the head of the park, for a tramp round 
it, in the gloom of the girdle of lights, to recover his dead- 
ened relish of the thin phantasmal strife to win an in- 
tangible prize. His dulled physical system asked, as with 
the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in the hurry- 
ing grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to get, and what 
was the substance of his gains : what ! if other than a pre- 
cipitous intimacy, a deep crumbling over deeper, with a 
little woman amusing him in remarks of a whimsical 
nudity ; hardly more. Xay, not more ! he said ; and at the 
end of twenty paces, he saw much more ; the campaign 
gathered a circling suggestive brilliancy, like the lamps 
about the winter park; the Society, lured with glitter, 
hooked by greed, composed a ravishing picture ; the little 
woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant ; and her 
hand was a small soft one, agreeable to fondle — and avaunt ! 
But so it is in war ; we must pay for our allies. What if 


356 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


it had been that he and she together, with their united 
powers . . . ? He dashed the silly vision aside, as vainer 
than one of the bubble-empires blown by boys ; and it broke, 
showing no heart in it. His heart was Nataly’s. 

Let Colney hint his worst; Nataly bore the strain, always 
did bear any strain coming in the round of her duties : and 
if she would but walk, or if she danced at parties, she would 
scatter the fits of despondency besetting the phlegmatic, 
like this day’s breeze the morning fog; or as he did with 
two minutes of the stretch of legs. 

Full of the grandeur of that black pit of the benighted 
London, with its ocean-voice of the heart at beat along the 
lighted outer ring, Victor entered at his old door of the 
two houses he had knocked into one : — a surprise for Fredi ! 
— and heard that his girl had arrived in the morning. 

^^And could no more endure her absence from her 
Mammy Oh ! ” The songful satirical line spouted in him, to 
be flung at his girl, as he ran upstairs to the boudoir off the 
drawing-room. 

He peeped in. It was dark. Sensible of presences, he 
gradually discerned a thick blot along the couch to the right 
of the door, and he drew near. Two were lying folded 
together ; mother and daughter. He bent over them. His 
hand was taken and pressed by Fredi’s ; she spoke; she said 
tenderly : Father.” Neither of the two made a movement. 
He heard the shivering rise of a sob, that fell. The dry 
sob going to the waste breath was Nataly’s. His girl did 
not speak again. 

He left them. He had no thought until he stood in his 
dressing-room, when he said Good ! ” For those two 
must have been lying folded together during the greater 
part of the day : and it meant that the mother’s heart had 
opened; the girl knew. Her tone: ^‘Father,” sweet, was 
heavy, too, with the darkness it came out of. 

So slie knew. Good. He clasped them both in his heart; 
tempering his pity of those dear ones with the thought that 
they were of the sex which finds enjoyment in a day of the 
mutual tear ; and envying them ; he strained at a richness 
appearing in the sobs of their close union. 

All of his girl’s loving soul flew to her mother; and 
naturally ! 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


357 


She would not be harsh on her father. She would say ; 
— he loved! And true: he did love, he does love; loves 
no woman but the dear mother. 

He flicked a short wring of the hand having taken pres- 
sure from an alien woman’s before Fredi pressed it, and 
absolved himself in the act ; thinking. How little does a 
woman know how true we can be to her when we smell at a 
flower here and there ! — There they are, stationary ; women 
the flowers, we the bee ; and we are faithful in our seeming 
volatility ; faithful to the hive I — And if women are to be 
stationary, the reasoning is not so bad. Funny, however, 
if they here and there imitatively spread a wing, and treat 
men in that way ? It is a breach of the convention ; we 
pay them our homage, that they may serve as flowers, not 
to be volatile tempters. Hataly never had been one of the 
sort: Lady Grace was. No necessity existed for compel- 
ling the world to bow to Lady Grace, while on behalf of his 
Nataly he had to . . . Victor closed the curtain over a gulf 
revealed by an invocation of Nature, and showing the tre- 
mendous force he partook of so largely, in her motive 
elements of the devourer. Horrid to behold, when we 
need a gracious presentation of the circumstances. She is 
a splendid power for as long as we confine her between the 
banks : but she has a passion to discover cracks ; and if we 
give her headway, she will find one, and drive at it, and be 
through, uproarious in her primitive licentiousness, unless 
we labour body and soul like Dutchmen at the dam. Here 
she was, and not desired, almost detested ! Nature detested ! 
It had come about through the battle for Nataly ; chiefly 
through Mrs. Burman’s tenacious hold of the filmy thread 
she took for life and was enabled to use as a means for the 
perversion besides bar to the happiness of creatures really 
living. We may well marvel at the Fates, and tell them 
they are not moral agents ! 

Victor’s reflections came across Colney Durance, who 
tripped and stopped them. 

Dressed with his customary celerity, he waited for Nesta, 
to show her the lighted grand double drawing-room : a 
further proof of how Fortune favoured him: — she was to 
be told, how he one day expressed a wish for greater space, 
and was informed on the next, that the neighbour house 


358 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


was being vacated, and the day following he was in treaty 
for the purchase of it ; returning from Tyrol, he found his 
place habitable. 

Kesta came. Her short look at him was fond, her voice 
not faltering ; she laid her hand under his arm and walked 
round the spacious room, praising the general design, 
admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings, and the 
grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the fire-grates 
and plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, 
as in sound, muted splendour. He told her it was a recep- 
tion night, with music : and added ; I miss my . . . seen 
anybody lately ? ’’ 

Mr. Sowerby?^’ said she. He was to have escorted 
me back. He may have overslept himself.’’ 

She spoke it plainly ; when speaking of the dear good 
ladies, she set a gentle humour at play, and comforted him, 
as she intended, with a souvenir of her lively spirit, want- 
ing only in the manner of gaiety. 

He allowed, that she could not be quite gay. 

More deeply touched the next minute, he felt in her 
voice, in her look, in her phrasing of speech, an older, much 
older daughter than the Fredi whom he had conducted to 
Moorsedge. Kiss me,” he said. 

She turned to him full-front, and kissed his right cheek 
and left, and his forehead, saying: ^^My love! my papa! 
my own dear dada ! ” all the words of her girlhood in her 
new sedateness; and smiling: like the moral crepuscular 
of a sunlighted day down a not totally inanimate Sunday 
London street. 

He strained her to his breast. Mama soon be here ? ” 
Soon.” 

That was well. And possibly at the present moment 
applying, with her cunning hand, the cosmetics and powders 
he could excuse for a concealment of the traces of grief. 

Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to 
see more than the world would when Nataly entered the 
dining-room at the quiet family dinner. She performed her 
part for his comfort, though not prattling; and he missed 
his Fredi’s delicious warble of the prattle running rill-like 
over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would have 
helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment : a recollection 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


359 


of news in the morning’s paper. ISTo harm before Fredi, 
my dear. She ’s a young woman now. And no harm, so 
to speak — at least, not against the Sanfredini. She has 
donned her name again, and a villa on Como, leaving her 
duque ; — paragraph from a Milanese musical Journal ; no 
particulars. Now, mark me, we shall have her at Lake- 
lands in the summer. If only we could have her now ! ” 

^^It would be a pleasure,” said Nataly. Her heart had a 
blow in the thought that a lady of this kind would create 
the pleasure by not bringing criticism. 

^^The godmother ?” he glistened upon Nesta. 

She gave him low half-notes of the little blue butterfly’s 
imitation of the superb contralto ; and her hand and head 
at turn to hint the theatrical operatic attitude. 

Delicious ! ” he cried, his eyelids were bedewed at the 
vision of the three of them planted in the past; and here 
again, out of the dark wood, where something had required 
to be said, and had been said ; and all was happily over, 
owing to the goodness and sweetness of the two dear 
innocents ; — whom heaven bless ! Jealousy of their natu- 
rally closer heart-at-heart had not a whisper for him ; part 
of their goodness and sweetness was felt to be in the not 
excluding him. 

Nesta engaged to sing one of the old duets with her 
mother. She saw her mother’s breast lift in a mechanical 
effort to try imaginary notes, as if doubtful of her capacity, 
more at home in the dumb deep sigh they fell to. Her 
mother’s heroism made her a sacred woman to the thoughts 
of the girl, overcoming wonderment at the extreme sub- 
missiveness. 

She put a screw on her mind to perceive the rational 
object there might be for causing her mother to go through 
tortures in receiving and visiting ; and she was arrested by 
the louder question, whether she could think such a man as 
her father irrational. 

People with resounding names, waves of a steady stream, 
were announced b}^ Arlington, just as in the days, that 
seemed remote, before she went to Moorsedge; only they 
were more numerous, and some of the titles had ascended 
a stage. There were great lords, there were many great 
ladies ; and Lady Grace Halley shuffling amid them, like a 


360 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


silken shimmer in voluminous robes. They crowded about 
their host where he stood. ‘^He is their LawP^ Colney 
said, speaking unintelligibly, in the absence of the Simeon 
Fenellan regretted so loudly by Mr. Beaves Urmsing. 
They had an air of worshipping, and he of swimming. 

There were also City magnates, and Lakelands’ neighbours : 
the gentleman representing Pride of Port, Sir Abraham 
Quatley ; and Colonel Corfe ; Sir Eodwell and Lady Blach- 
ington; Mrs. Fanning; Mr. Caddis. Few young men and 
maids were seen. Dr. John Cormyn came without his wife, 
not mentioning her. Mrs. Peter Yatt touched the notes for 
voices at the piano. Priscilla Graves was a vacancy, and 
likewise the Eev. Septimus Barmby. Peridon and Catkin, 
and Mr. Pempton took their usual places. There was no 
fluting. A famous Canadian lady was the principal singer. 
A Galician violinist, zig-zagging extreme extensions and 
contractions of his corporeal frame in execution, and de- 
scribed by Colney as Paganini on a wall,” failed to supplant 
Durandarte in Nesta’s memory. She was asked by Lady 
Grace for the latest of Dudley. Sir Abraham Quatley 
named him with handsome emphasis. Great dames caressed 
her; openly approved; shadowed the future place among 
them. 

Victor alluded at night to Mrs. John Cormyh’s absence. 
He said: A homoeopathic doctor’s wife!” nothing more; 
and by that little, he prepared Nesta for her mother’s 
explanation. The great London people, ignorant or not, 
were caught by the strong tide he created, and carried on it. 
But there was a bruiting of the secret among their set ; and 
the one to fall away from her, ISlataly marvelliiigly named 
Mrs. John Cormjui ; whose marriage was of her making. 
She did not disapprove Priscilla’s behaviour. Priscilla had 
come to her and, protesting affection, had openly stated that 
she required time and retirement to recover her proper 
feelings. Kataly smiled a melancholy criticism of an incon- 
sequent or capricious woman, in relating to Hesta certain 
observations Priscilla had dropped upon poor faithful Mr. 
Pempton, because of his concealment from her of his knowl- 
edge of things : for this faithful gentleman had been one of 
the few not ignorant. The rumour was traceable to the 
City. 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


361 


Mother, we walk on planks,’’ Nesta said. 

Nataly answered: You will grow used to it.” 

Her mother’s habitual serenity in martyrdom was deceiv- 
ing. Nesta had a transient suspicion that she had grown, 
from use, to like the whirl of company, for oblivion in the 
excitement ; and as her remembrance of her own station 
among the crowding people was a hot flush, the difference 
of their feelings chilled her. 

Nataly said : ‘‘ It is to-morrow night again ; we do not 
rest.” She smiled; and at once the girl read woman’s 
armour on the dear face, and asked herself, Could I be so 
brave ? The question following was a speechless wave, that 
surged at her father. She tried to fathom the scheme he 
entertained. The attempt obscured her conception of the 
man he was. She could not grasp him, being too young for 
knowing that young heads cannot obtain a critical hold 
upon one whom they see grandly succeeding : it is the sun’s 
brilliance to their eyes. 

Mother and daughter slept together that night, and their 
embrace was their world. 

Nesta delighted her father the next day by walking beside 
him into the City, as far as the end of the Embankment, 
where the carriage was in waiting with her maid to bring 
her back; and at his mere ejaculation of a wish, the hardy 
girl drove down in the afternoon for the walk home with 
him. Lady Grace Halley was at the office. I am an in- 
corrigible Stock Exchange gambler,” she said. 

^^Only,” Victor bade her beware, “Mines are undulating 
in movement, and their heights are a preparation for their 
going down.” 

She said she “liked a swing.” 

Nesta looked at them in turn. 

The day after and the day after. Lady Grace was present. 
She made play with Dudley’s name, 

This coming into the City daily of a girl, for the sake of 
walking back in winter weather with her father, struck her 
as ambiguous : either a jealous foolish mother’s device, or 
that of a weak man beating about for protection. But the 
woman of the positive world soon read to the contrary ; 
helped a little by the man, no doubt. She i-ead rather too 
much to the contrary, and took the pedestrian girl for perfect 


362 


ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


simplicity in her tastes, when Nesta had so far grown 
watchful as to feel relieved by the lady’s departure. Her 
mother, without sympathy for the lady, was too great of 
soul for jealousy. Victor had his Nataly before him at a 
hint from Lady Grace : and he went somewhat further than 
the exact degree when affirming that Nataly could not 
scheme, and was incapable of suspecting. — Nataly could 
perceive things with a certain accuracy : she would not stoop 
to a meanness. — Plot ? Nataly ? ” said he, and shrugged. 
In fact, the void of plot, drama, shuffle of excitement, re- 
flected upon Nataly. He might have seen as tragic as ever 
dripped on Stage, had he looked. 

But the walk Westward with his girl, together with 
pride in a daughter who clove her way through all 
weathers, won his heart to exultation. He told her: 
‘‘Predi does her dada so much good; ” not telling her in 
what, or opening any passage to th^ mystery of the man 
he was. She was trying to be a student of life, with her 
eyes down upon hard earth, despite of her winged young 
head; she would have compassed him better had he 
dilated in sublime fashion ; but he baffled her perusal of 
a man of power by the simpleness of his enjoyment of 
small things coming in his way ; — the lighted shops, the 
crowd, emergence from the crowd, or the meeting near 
midwinter of a soft warm wind along the Embankment, 
and dark Thames magnificently coroneted over his grimy 
flow. There is no grasping of one who quickens us. 

His flattery of his girl, too, restored her broken feeling 
of personal value; it permeated her nourishingly from the 
natural breath of him that it was. 

At times he touched deep in humaneness; and he sat her 
heart leaping on the flash of a thought to lay it bare, with 
the secret it held, for his help. That was a dream. She 
could more easily have uttered the words to Captain Dar- 
trey, after her remembered abashing holy tremour of the 
vision of doing it and casting herself on noblest man’s com- 
passionateness ; and her imagined thousand emotions ; — a 
rolling music within her, a wreath of cloud-glory in her 
sky ; — which had, as with virgins it may be, plighted her 
body to him for sheer urgency of soul; drawn her by a 
single unwitting-to-brain, conscious-in-blood, shy curl 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


363 


outward of the sheathing leaf to the flowering of woman 
to him ; even to the shore of that strange sea, where the 
maid stands choosing this one man for her destiny, as in a 
trance. So are these young ones unfolded, shade by shade; 
and a shade is all the difference with them; they can teach 
the poet to marvel at the immensity of vitality in “the 
shadow of a shade. 

Her father shut the glimpse of a possible speaking to 
him of Mrs. Marsett, with a renewal of his eulogistic 
allusions to Dudley Sowerby : the perfect gentleman, 
good citizen;” prospective heir to an earldom besides. 
She bowed to Dudley’s merits; she read off the honorific 
pedimental letters of a handsome statue, for a sign to her- 
self that she passed it. 

She was unjust, as Victor could feel, though he did not 
know how coldly unjust. For among the exorbitant requi- 
sitions upon their fellow-creatures made by the young, is 
the demand that they be definite: no mercy is in them 
for the transitional. And Dudley — and it was under her 
influence, and painfully, not ignobly — was in process of 
development : interesting to philosophers, if not to 
maidens. 

Victor accused her of paying too much heed to Colney 
Durance’s epigrams upon their friends. He quite joined 
with his English world in its opinion, that epigrams are 
poor squibs when they do not come out of great guns. 
Epigrams fired at a venerable nation are surely the poorest 
of popgun paper pellets. The English kick at the inso- 
lence, when they are not in the mood for pelleting them- 
selves, or when the armed Foreigner is overshadowing 
and braceing. Colney ’s pretentious and laboured Satiric 
Prose Epic of “The Rival Tongues,” jiarticularly offended 
him, as being a clever aim at no hitting; and sustained 
him, inasmuch as it was an acid friend’s collapse. How 
could Colney expect his English to tolerate such a spiteful 
diatribe! The suicide of Dr. Bouthoin at San Francisco 
was the finishing stroke to the chances of success of the 
Serial; — although we are promised splendid evolutions on 
the part of Mr. Semhians; who, after brilliant achieve- 
ments with bat and ball, abandons those weapons of Old 
England’s modern renown, for a determined wrestle with 


364 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


our English pronunciation of words, and rescue of the 
spelling of them from the printer. His headache over the 
present treatment of the verb ‘‘To bid/’ was a quaint be- 
ginning for one who had soon to plead before Japanese, 
and who acknowledged now “in contrition of spirit,” 
that in formerly opposing the scheme for an Academy, he 
helped to the handing of our noble language to the rapid 
reporter of news for an apathetic public. Eurther, he 
discovered in astonishment the subordination of all literary 
Americans to the decrees of their literary authorities; 
marking a Transatlantic point of departure, and contrasting 
ominously with the unruly Islanders — “ grunting the 
higgledy-piggledy of their various ways, in all the porker’s 
gut-gamut at the rush to the trough.” After a week’s pri- 
vation of bat and ball, he is, lighted or not, a gas-jet of 
satire upon his countrymen. As for the “ pathetic sublimity 
of the Funeral of Dr. Bouthoin,” Victor inveighed against 
an impious irony in the overdose of the pathos; and the 
same might be suspected in Britannia’s elegy upon him, 
a strain of hot eulogy throughout. Mr. Semhians, all 
but treasonably, calls it, Papboat and Brandy: — .“our 
English literary diet of the day:” stimulating and not 
nourishing. Britannia’s mournful anticipation, that “ The 
shroud enwinding this my son is mine ! ” ■ — should the 
modern generation depart from the track of him who 
proved himself the giant in mainly supporting her glory 
— was, no doubt, a high pitch of the note of Conservatism. 
But considering that Dr. Bouthoin “committed suicide 
under a depression of mind produced by a surfeit of unac- 
customed dishes, upon a physical system inspired by the 
traditions of exercise, and no longer relieved by the prac- 
tice ” — to translate from Dr. Gannius : — we are again at 
war with the writer’s reverential tone, and we know not 
what to think: except that Mr. Durance was a Saturday 
meat-market’s butcher in the Satiric Art. 

Nesta found it pleasanter to see him than to hear of his 
work: which, to her present feeling, was inhuman. As 
little as our native public, had she then any sympathy for 
the working in the idea: she wanted throbs, visible aims, 
the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the tale 
of slaughter — periodically invading all English classes as 


NESTA AND HER FATHER 


365 


a flush from the undrained lower, Vikings all — to frigid 
sterile Satire. And truly it is not a fruit-bearing rod. 
Colney had to stand on the defence of it against the dam- 
sel’s charges. He thought the use of the rod, while ex- 
pressing profound regret at a difference of opinion between 
him and those noble heathens, beneficial for boys; but in 
relation to their seniors, and particularly for old gentle- 
men, he thought that the sharpest rod to cut the skin 
was the sole saving of them. Insensibility to Satire, he 
likened to the hard-mouthed horse ; which is doomed to the 
worser thing in consequence. And consequently upon the 
lack of it, and of training to appreciate it, he described his 
country's male venerables as being distinguishable from 
annuitant spinsters only in presenting themselves forked. 

‘‘He is unsuccessful and embittered,” Victor said to 
Nesta. “ Colney will find in the end, that he has lost his 
game and soured himself by never making concessions. 
Here ’s this absurd Serial — it fails, of course ; and then he 
has to say, it ’s because he won’t tickle his English, won’t 
enter into a ‘ frowzy complicity ’ with their tastes.” 

“But — I think of Skepsey — honest creatures respect 
Mr. Durance, and he is always ready to help them,” said 
Nesta. 

“If he can patronize.” 

“ Does he patronize me, dada ? ” 

“You are one of his exceptions. Marry a title and 
live in state — and then hear him! I am successful, and 
the result of it is, that he won’t acknowledge wisdom in 
anything I say or do; he will hardly acknowledge the suc- 
cess. It is ‘ a dirty road to success,’ he says. So that, if 
successful, I must have rolled myself in mire. I com- 
pelled him to admit he was wrong about your being re- 
ceived at Moorsedge : a bit of a triumph ! ” 

Hesta’s walks with her father were no loss of her to 
Hataly ; the girl came back to her bearing so fresh and so 
full a heart; and her father was ever prouder of her; he 
presented new features of her in his quotations of her say- 
ings, thoughtful sayings. “I declare she helps one to 
think,” he said. “It ’s not precocity; it ’s healthy inquiry. 
She brings me nearer ideas of my own, not yet examined, 
than any one else does. I say, what a wife for a man ! ” 


366 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEROBS 


“She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not 
quite strong,’^ said Nataly. “You have not seen 

“ Dudley Sowerby ? He ^s at Cronidge, I believe. His 
elder brother ^s in a bad way. Bad business, this looking 
to a death.” 

Nataly’s eyes revealed a similar gulf. 

Let it be cast on Society, then ! A Society opposing 
Nature forces us to these murderous looks upon impedi- 
ments. But what of a Society in the dance with Nature ? 
Victor did not approve of that. He began, under the in- 
fluence of Nesta’s companionship, to see the Goddess 
Nature there is in a chastened nature. And this view 
shook the curtain covering his lost Idea. He felt sure he 
should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight : a muffled 
voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so 
by the inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascend- 
ing to her spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike : 
Themison, Carling, Jarniman, even the Eev. Groseman 
Buttermore, had been won to the cause of humanity. Her 
ascent, considering her inability to do further harm below, 
was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner 
almost as mysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having 
a slippery bit on it. Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he had 
found his feet again. But there was a bruise wliere, to his 
honour, he felt tenderest. And Fredi away, he might be 
down again — for no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery, 
one might guess, by a predecessor or two. Ta-ta-ta-ta and 
mum ! Still, in justice to the little woman, she had been 
serviceable. She would be still more so, if a member of 
Parliament now on his back — here we are with the 
murder-eye again! 

Nesta’s never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, 
as an intimation of her bent of mind. 

“And does my girl come to her dada to-day ?” he said, 
on the fifth morning since her return; prepared with a 
villanous resignation to hear that this day she abstained, 
though he had the wish for her coming. 

“Why, don’t you know,” said she, “we all meet to have 
tea in Mr. Durance’s chambers; and I walk back with you, 
and there we are joined by mama; and we are to have a 
feast of literary celebrities.” 


THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 367 

^^Colney’s selection ot‘ them! And Simeon Fenellan, I 
hope. Perhaps Dartrey. Perhaps . . . eh ? ” 

She reddened. So Dudley Sowerby’s unspoken -name 
could bring the blush to her cheeks. Dudley had his 
excuses in his brother’s condition. His father's health, 
too, was — but this was Dudley calculating. Where there 
are coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; 
just as where there are complications. Odd, one fancies 
it, that we walking along the pavement of civilized life, 
should be perpetually summoning Orcus to our aid, for 
the sake of getting a clear course. 

“And supposing a fog, my dearie ? ” he said. 

“ The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to 
light her to him through densest fogs as well as over 
deserts,” &c. She declaimed a long sentence, to set the 
ripple running in his features; and when he left the room 
for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her 
mother’s neck , murmuring : “Mother! mother! ” a cry equal 
to “I am sure I do right,” and understood so by Nataly 
approving it; she too on the line of her instinct, without 
an object in sight. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 

Taking Nesta’s hand, on her entry into his chambers 
with her father, Colney Durance bowed over it and kissed 
it. The unusual performance had a meaning; she felt she 
was praised. It might be because she made herself her 
father’s companion. “I can’t persuade him to put on a 
great-coat,” she said. “You would defeat his aim at the 
particular waistcoat of his ambition,” said Colney, goaded 
to speak, not anxious to be heard. 

He kept her beside him, leading her about for intro- 
ductions to multiform celebrities of both sexes; among 
them the gentleman editing the Magazine which gave out 
serially The Rival Tongues; and there was talk of a 


368 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


dragon-throated piiblic^s queer appetite in Letters. The 
pained Editor deferentially smiled at her cheerful mention 
of Delphica. ‘‘In book form, perhaps!/^ he remarked, 
with plaintive resignation ; adding : “ You read it ? And 
a lady exclaimed: “We all read it! ” 

But we are the elect, who see signification and catch 
flavour; and we are reminded of an insatiable monster how 
sometimes capricious is his gorge. “He may happen to 
be in the humour for a shaking! ” Colney^s poor consola- 
tion it was to say of the prospects of his published book: 
for the funny monster has been known to like a shaking. 

“He takes it kinder tickled,’^ said Fenellan, joining the 
group and grasping Nesta’s hand with a warmth that 
thrilled her and set her guessing. “A taste of his favour- 
ite Cayenne lollypop, Colney ; it fetches the tear he loves 
to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of his 
literary receptacle — fearfully relaxed and enormous ! And 
no wonder; his notion of the attitude for reading, is to lie 
him down on his back; and he has in a jifl'y the funnel of 
the Libraries inserted into his mouth, and he feels the 
publishers pouring their gallons through it unlimitedly; 
never crying out, which he canT; only swelling, which 
he’s obliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and 
that’s his intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the 
horrible old torture of the haillir d?eau : and he ’s doomed 
to perish in the worst book-form of dropsy. You, my dear 
Colney, have offended his police or excise, who stand by 
the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that 
nothing above proof is poured in; and there ’s your mis- 
fortune. He ’s not half a bad fellow, you find when you 
have n’t got to serve him.” 

“ Superior to his official parasites, one supposes ! ” Colney 
murmured. 

The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary 
failure having certain merits ; they discussed it, to comjfli- 
ment the crownless author; and the fervider they, the 
more was he endowed to read the meanness prompting the 
generosity. Publication of a book is the philosopher’s 
lantern upon one’s fellows. 

Colney was caught away from his private manufactory 
of a,cids by hearing Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some 


THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 369 

of the recent occurrences at Brighton. Simeon’s tone was 
unsatisfying; Colney would have the word; he was like 
steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national 
grotesque-sublime. 

^^That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don’t listen to 
Simeon; he’s a man of lean narrative, fit to chronicle 
political party wrangles and such like crop of carcase 
prose: this is epical. In Drink we have Old England’s 
organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olym- 
pus, ennobled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery 
to hand. Keep a straight eye on the primary motives of 
man, you T1 own the English produce the material for 
proud verse; they’re alive there! Dartrey’s Demerara 
makes a pretty episode of the battle. I have n’t seen it 
— if it ’s possible to look on it : but I hear it is flexible, of 
a vulgar appearance in repose, Jove’s lightning at one 
time, the thong of JEacus at another. ’ Observe Dartrey 
marching off to the Station, for the purpose of laying his 
miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars, 
who had offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! 
His name, Simeon? — Worrell; a Major Worrell: his 
offence being probably, that he obtained military instruc- 
tion in the Service, and left it at his convenience, for our 
poor patch and tatter British Army to take in his place 
another young student, who ’ll grow up to do similarly. 
And Dartrey, we assume, is off to stop that system. You 
behold Sir Dartrey twirling the weapon in preparatory 
fashion; because he is determined we shall have an army 
of trained officers instead of infant amateurs heading heroic 
louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey! — always un- 
patriotic, you ’ll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress 
to fix eyes on a star: eyes on Beer for the uniting of you 
English! I tell you no poetic fiction. Seeing him on his 
way, thus terribly armed, and knowing his intent, Venus, 
to shield a former favourite servant of Mars, conjured the 
most diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young 
woman in a poke-bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, march- 
ing with a dozen or so, informing bedevilled mankind of 
the hideousness of our hymnification when it is not under 
secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challenging criti- 
cism ; and that was hard by, and real English, in the form 

24 


370 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


of bludgeons, wielded by a battalion of the national idol 
Bungay Beervat’s boysj and they fell upon the hymners. 
Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck the 
maid adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which 
slew them! Our little man drove into the press with a 
pair of fists able to do their work. A valiant skiff upon a 
sea of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and suddenly 
the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough to 
say, brains would have come. The Bungays made a show 
of fight. No lack of blood in them, to stock a raw shil- 
ling’s worth or gush before Achilles raging. You perceive 
the picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We want only 
a few names of the fallen. It was the carving of a maitre 
chef, according to Skepsey : right — left — and point, with 
supreme precision: they fell, accurately sliced from the 
joint. Having done with them , Dartrey tossed the Deme- 
rara to Skepsey, and washed his hands of battle; and he 
let his major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the 
day ! ” 

Nesta’s ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell. 

Skepsey did come back to London with a rather dam- 
aged frontispiece,” Victor said. ‘^He can’t have joined 
those people ? ” 

‘‘They may suit one of your militant peacemakers,” 
interposed Eenellan. “ The most placable creatures alive, 
and the surest for getting-up a shindy.” 

“ Suit him ! They b*e the scandal of our streets.” Victor . 
was pricked with a jealousy of them for beguiling him of 
his trusty servant. 

“Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality,” 
said Colney. “You don’t see elsewhere any vein in move- 
ment — movement,” he harped on the word Victor con- 
stantly employed to express the thing he wanted to see. 
Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on 
edge. They ’re honest foes of vice, and they move : — in 
England ! Pulpit-preaching has no effect. Foj^ gi^oss mal- 
adies, gross remedies. You may judge of what you are by 
the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I won’t attempt to 
paint — it would barely be decent, but compare it with the 
spectacle of English frivolity, and you ’ll admit it to be the 
best show you make. It may still be the saving of you — 


THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 


S71 


on the level of the orderly ox: I Ve not observed that it 
aims at higher. — And talking of the pulpit, Barmby is oft' 
to the East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy, Skepsey 
tells me.” 

So there ^s the reason for our not seeing him ! ” Victor 
turned to Xesta. 

^^Papa, you won’t be angry with Skepsey if he has joined 
those people,” said Nesta. “I’m sure he thinks of serv- 
ing his country, Mr. Durance.” 

Golney smiled on her. “ And you too ? ” 

“If women knew how! ” 

“ They ^re hitting on more ways at present than the men 
— in England.” 

“But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when 
they ’re allowed the chance here.” 

“ Good 1 ” Eenellan exclaimed. “ And that upsets his 
placement of the modern national genders : Germany mas- 
culine, France feminine. Old England what remains.” 

Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of “Neuter ? ” 

Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promo- 
tion, by her being led about and introduced to ladies. 
They were encouraging with her. One of them, a Mrs. 
Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminine 
insurrection. She said: “I hear your praises from Mr. 
Durance. He rarely praises. You have shown capacity 
to meditate on the condition of women, he says.” 

Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She 
speculated in the dark, as to whether her aim to serve and 
help was not so friendless. And did Mr. Durance approve ? 
But surely she stood in a glorious England if there were 
men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! 
that is the broad free England where gentlemen and gentle- 
women accept of the meanest aid to cleanse the land of its 
iniquities, and do not suffer shame to smite a young face 
for touching upon horrors with a pure design. 

She cried in her bosom : I feel ! She had no other ex- 
pression for that which is as near as great natures may 
come to the conceiving of the celestial spirit from an emis- 
sary angel; and she trembled, the tire ran through her. It 
seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that 
certainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woeful- 


372 


ONE OF OUE, OONQUEEOKS 


lest of evils; and if not helping, it would still be a blessed- 
ness for her to kneel thanking heaven. 

Society was being attacked and defended. She could but 
studiously listen. Her father was listening. The assail- 
ant was a lady; and she had a hearing, altliough she 
treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial for an 
offence against a more precious: viz., the individual 
cramped by brutish laws: the individual with the ideas 
of our time, righteously claiming expansion out of the 
clutches of a narrow old-world disciplinarian — that giant 
hypocrite ! She flung the gauntlet at externally venerable 
Institutions; and she had a hearing, where horrification, 
execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a 
shortly antecedent day have been hissing and snakily 
lashing, hounding her to expulsion. Mrs. Marina Floyer 
gravely seconded her. Colney did the same. Victor 
turned sharp on him. ^^Yes/^ Colney said; ‘‘we unfold 
the standard of extremes in this country, to get a single 
step taken: that ’s how we move: we threaten death to get 
footway. Now, mark: Society’s errors will be admitted.’’ 

A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society’s 
errors. Nevertheless, it so distinctly exists for the com- 
mon good, that we may say of Society in relation to the 
individual, it is the body to the soul. We may wash, 
trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of 
our individuality in opposition to the Government of 
Society — this existing Society — is a toss of the cap for 
the erasure of our civilization, et csetera. 

Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach 
our case. — But, if you please, we ask permission to wash, 
trim, purify, and we do not get it. — But you have it ! — 
Because we take it at our peril; and you, who are too 
cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary 
from the pits hj your slackness : — &c. There was a pretty 
hot debate. Both assailant and defendant, to Victor’s 
thinking, spoke well, and each the right thing: and he 
could have made use of both, but he could answer neither. 
He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and dis- 
covered it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side 
of Society. Yet he was annoyed to find the attack was o 
easily answerable when the defence unfolded. But it was 


THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 


373 


absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact, a position 
secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain for stul- 
tifying us. 

Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly’s 
handwriting called him home. She wrote : Make my 
excuses. C. D. will give Nesta and some lady dinner. 
A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quite 
well, robust. Impatient to consult with you, nothing 
else.’’ 

Nesta was happy to stay; and Victor set forth. 

The visitor ? plainly Dudley. Nataly’s trusting the girl 
to the chance of some lady being present, was unlike her. 
Dudley might be tugging at the cord ; and the recent con- 
versation upon Society rendered one of its gilt pillars 
particularly estimable. — A person in the debate had de- 
clared this modern protest on behalf of individualism to 
represent Society’s Criminal Trial. And it is likely to be 
a long one. And good for the world, that we see such a 
Trial! — Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old 
criminal : not much, more advanced than the state of spiri- 
tual worship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry 
Lord. But it has a case for pleading. We may liken it, 
as we have it now, to the bumping lumberer’s raft; suita- 
ble along torrent waters until we come to smoother. Are 
we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting 
level? — enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer 
design. If Society is to subsist, it must have the human 
with the logical argument against the cry of the free-flags, 
instead of presenting a block’s obtuseness. That you need 
not hesitate to believe, will be rolled downward and dis- 
integrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the 
logical concrete of humane considerateness: — a Society 
prohibiting to Mrs. Burman her wielding of a life-long 
rod. . , . 

The personal element again to confuse inquiry 1 — And 
Skepsey and Barmby both of them bent on doing work 
without inquiry of any sort ! They were enviable : they 
were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it 
hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back 
of his head, fancying a throb there. — Are civilized crea- 
tures incapable of abstract thought when their social posi- 


874 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


tion is dubious ? For if so, we never can be quit of those 
we forsake. — Apparently Mrs. Burman’s unfathomed 
power lay in her compelling him to summon the devilish 
in himself and play upon the impish in Society, that he 
might overcome her. 

Victor’s house-door stopped this current. 

Nataly took his embrace. 

“Nothing wrong ? ” he said, and saw the something. It 
was a favourable moment to tell her what she might not 
at another time regard as a small affair. “News in the 
City to-day of that South London borough being vacated. 
Quatley urges me. A death again ! I saw Pempton, too. 
Will you credit me when I tell you he carries his infatua- 
tion so far, that he has been investing in Japanese and 
Chinese Loans, because they are less meat-eaters than 
others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us all ! 

— Dudley the visitor ? ” 

“Mr. Sowerby has been here,” she said, in a shaking low 
voice. 

Victor held her hand and felt a squeeze more nervous 
than affectionate. 

“To consult with me,” she added. “My maid will go 
at ten to bring Nesta; Mr. Durance I can count on, to see 
her safe home. Ah ! ” she wailed. 

Victor nodded, saying: “I guess. And, my love, you 
will receive Mrs. John Cormyn to-morrow morning. I 
can’t endure gaps. Gaps In our circle must never be. Do 
T guess ? — I spoke to Colney about bringing her home.” 

Nataly sighed: “Ah! make what provision we will! 
Evil Mr. Sowerby has had a great deal to bear.” 

“A worldling may think so.” 

Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restrain- 
ing of tears froze her speech. 

“ Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. 
And how the Miss Duvidneys ! ... At that Brighton ! ” 

— The voice he heard was not his darling’s deep rich note, 
it had dropped to toneless hoarseness: “She has been per- 
mitted to make acquaintance — she has been seen riding 
with — she has called upon — Oh ! it is one of those 
abandoned women. In her house ! Our girl! Our Nesta! 
She was insulted by a man in the woman’s house. She is 


THE MOTHER — THE DAUGHTER 


375 


talked of over Brighton. The mother! — the daughter! 
And grant me this — that never was girl more carefully 
. . . never till she was taken from me. Oh! do not 
forget. You will defend me ? You will say that her 
mother did with all her soul strive ... It is not a 
rumour. Mr. Sowerby has had it confirmed. A sob 
caught her voice. 

Victor’s hands caressed to console: “Dudley does not 
propose to . . . ? ” 

“Nesta must promise . . . But how it happened ? 
How 1 An acquaintance with — contact with ! — Oh ! 
cruel I ” Each time she ceased speaking, the wrinkles of a 
shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, 
but she locked them in. 

“An accident!” said Victor; “some misunderstanding 
— there can’t be harm. Of course, she promises — has n’t 
to promise. How could a girl distinguish ! He does not 
cast blame on her ? ” 

“Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. 
He knows : — it is over the Clubs there ; he will tell you, 
before a word to Nesta. Innocent, yes ! Mr. Sowerby 
has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of the character of 
the dreadful woman ? Ah, if I could ever in anything 
think her ignorant! She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is 
indulgent. He does me justice. My duty to her — I must 
defend myself — has been my first thought. I said in my 
prayers — she at least! ... We have to see the more than 
common reasons why she, of all girls, should — he did not 
hint it, he was delicate: her name must not be public.” 

“Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,” 
said Victor. “It does not suit me to hear the word ^ in- 
dulgent.’ My dear, if you were down there, you would 
discover that the talk was the talk of two or three men 
seeing our girl ride by — and she did ride with a troop : 
why, we ’ve watched them along the parade, often. Clear 
as day how it happened ! I ’ll go down early to-morrow.” 

He fancied N'ataly was appeased. And even out of this 
annoyance, there was the gain of her being won to favour 
Dudley’s hitherto but tolerated suit. 

Kataly also had the fancy that the calm following on 
her anguish was a Moderation of it. She was kept strung 


376 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


to confide in her girl by the recent indebtedness to her for 
words heavenly in the strengthening comfort they gave. 
But no sooner was she alone than her torturing perplexi- 
ties and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor’s 
coming returned. 

Fora girl of Nesta’s head could not be deceived; she 
had come home with a woman’s intelligence of the world, 
hard knowledge of it — a knowledge drawn from foul 
wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe 
to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the 
world’s idea, that corruption must come of the contact with 
impurity. 

Nataly renewed her cry of despair : The mother ! — the 
daughter I ” — her sole revelation of the heart’s hollows in 
her stammered speaking to Victor. 

She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where 
she could repeat : The mother ! — the daughter ! ” hear- 
ing the world’s words: — the daughter excused, by reason 
of her having such a mother; the mother unpitied tor the 
bruiting of her brazen daughter’s name: but both alike 
consigned to the corners of the world’s dust-heaps. She 
cried out that her pride was broken. Her pride, her last 
support of life, had gone to pieces. The tears she re- 
strained in Victor’s presence, were called on to come now, 
and she had none. It might be that she had not strength 
for weeping. She was very weak. Rising from bed to 
lock her door against Nesta’s entry to the room on her 
return at night, she could hardly stand: a chill and a 
clouding overcame her. The quitted bed seemed the 
haven of a drifted wreck to reach. 

Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of 
the early winter morning. ^^The mother! — the daugh- 
ter I ” had swung a pendulum for some time during the 
night in him, too. He would rather have been subjected 
to the spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless 
voice, as it were the dry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead 
of melodious, if afflicting, waters. 

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured 
of a headache: “Though, upon my word, the best cure for 
mama would be a look into Fredi’s eyes ! ” he said, embrac- 
ing his girl, quite believing in her, just a little afraid of her. 


NATALY, NESTA, Ai^D DARTREY FENELLAN 377 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN 

Pleasant things, that come to us too late for our savour 
of the sweetness in them, toll ominously of life on the last 
walk to its end. Yesterday, before Dudley Sowerby^s 
visit, Nataly would have been stirred where the tears we 
shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell when see- 
ing her friend Mrs. John Cormyh enter her boudoir and 
hearing her speak repentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John 
said: ‘‘You will believe I have suffered, dear; I am half 
my weight, I do think: and she did not set the smile of 
responsive humour moving; although these two ladies had 
a key of laughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; 
held her hand, and at the parting kissed her. She would 
rather have seen her friend than not: so far she differed 
from a corpse ; but she was near the likeness to the dead in 
the insensibility to any change of light shining on one 
who best loved darkness and silence. She cried to herself 
wilfully, that her pride was broken: as women do when 
they spurn at the wounding of a dignity they cannot pro- 
tect and die to see bleeding; for in it they live. 

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and 
after a certain space for recovery combative. She said: 
Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would 
not refuse; I would humble myself and bless heaven for 
being able to pay my debt — what I can of it. All I con- 
tend against is, injustice. And she sank into sensational 
protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud 
to phrase them. 

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her 
utter loneliness; — an outcast from her family; daily, and 
she knew not how, more shut away from the man she loved; 
now shut away from her girl ; — seemed under the hand of 
the angel of God. The abandonment of her by friends, 
was merely the light to show it. 

Midday’s post brought her a letter from Priscilla 
Graves, entreating to be allowed to call on her next day. 


378 


ONE OF OUE CONQUEKORS 


— We are not so easily cast off ! ISTataly said, bitterly, in 
relation to the lady whose offending had not been so great. 
She wrote: ‘‘Come, if sure that you sincerely wish to.’^ 

Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, 
with some taste of the food, haunted by an accusation of 
gluttony because of her eating at all, and a vile confession, 
that she was enabled to eat, owing to the receipt of Pris- 
cilla’s empty letter: for her souPs desire was to be doing 
a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her 
assurance to herself of the courage to make amends. — I 
must have some strength, she said wearifully, in apology 
for the morsel consumed. 

Nesta’s being in the house with her, became an excessive 
irritation. Doubts of the girl’s possible honesty to speak 
a reptile truth under question ; amazement at her boldness 
to speak it; hatred of the mouth that could; and loathing 
of the words, the theme; and abomination of herself for 
conjuring fictitious images to rouse real emotions, — all ran 
counterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, 
affrighting to reason : and then, for its preservation, reason 
took a superrational leap, and ascribed the terrible injus- 
tice of this last cruel stroke to the divine scourge, recog- 
nized divine by the selection of the mortal spot for 
chastisement. She clasped her breast and said: It is 
mortal. And that calmed her. 

She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow 
came ! Therefore the blow was proved divine. Ought it 
not to be welcomed ? — and she appearing no better than 
one of those, the leprous of the sex! And brought to 
acknowledgement of the likeness by her daughter ! 

Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations 
and was ice. She had denied herself to Nesta’s redoubled 
petition. Nesta knocking at the door a third time and 
calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her girl on her 
breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She 
heard the voice of Dartrey Fenellan. 

He was admitted. “No, dear,” she said to Nesta; and 
Nesta’s, “My own mother,” consentingly said, in tender 
resignation, as she retired, sprang a stinging tear to the 
mother’s eyelids. 

Dartrey looked at the door closing on the girl. 


NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTKEY FENELLAN 379 


‘‘ Is it a very low woman ? ” Nataly asked him in a 
Church whisper, with a face abashed. 

‘‘It is not,’’ said he, quick to meet any abruptness. 

“She must be cunning.” 

“In the ordinary way. We say it of Puss before the 
hounds.” 

“To deceive a girl like Nesta! ” 

“She has done no harm.” 

“ Dartrey, you speak to a mother. You have seen the 
woman ? She is ? — ah ! ” 

“She is womanly, womanly.” 

“ Quite one of those . . . ? ” 

“My dear soul ! You can’t shake them off in that way. 
She is one of us. If we have the class, we can’t escape 
from it. They are not to bear all the burden because they 
exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell you she is 
womanly.” 

“It sounds like horrid cynicism.” 

“Friends of mine would abuse it for the reverse.” 

“ Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a 
rod on my back. Provided only she has not dropped 
venom into Nesta’s mind ! ” 

“ Don’t fear ! ” 

“ Can you tell me you think she has done no harm to 
my girl ? ” 

“To Nesta herself? — not any: not to a girl like your 
girl.” 

“ To my girl’s name ? Speak at once. But I know she 
has. She induced Nesta to go to her house. My girl was 
insulted in this woman’s house.” 

Dartrey’s forehead ridged with his old fur}^’ and a gust 
of present contempt. “I can tell you this, that the fellow 
who would think harm of it, knowing the facts, is not 
worthy of touching the tips of the fingers of your girl.” 

“ She is talked of ! ” 

“ A good-looking girl out riding with a handsome woman 
on a parade of idlers ! ” 

“The woman is notorious.” Nataly said it shivering. 

He shook his head. “Not true.” 

“ She has an air of a lady ? ” 

“She sits a horse well,” 


380 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Would she to any extent deceive me — impose on me 
here ? 

‘‘Ah ! ’’ Nataly moaned. 

“But what?’’ said Dartrey. “There was no pretence. 
Her style is not worse than that of some we have seen. 
There was no effort to deceive. The woman ’s plain for 
you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one or two 
tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. 
There are women who have them, and have not been driven 
or let slip into the wilderness.” 

“Yes; I know! — those ideas of yours!” Nataly had 
once admired him for his knightliness toward the weakest 
women and the women underfoot. “You have spoken to 
this woman ? She boasted of acquaintance with Nesta ? ” 

“She thanked God for having met her.” 

“Is it one of the hysterical creatures ? ” 

Mrs. Marsett appeared fronting Dartrey. 

He laughed to himself. “A clever question. There is 
a leaning to excitement of manner at times. It ’s not 
hysteria. Allow for her position.” 

Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and 
still more harshly said: “What rank of life does the 
woman come from ? ” 

“ The class educated for a skittish career by your popular 
Stage and your Book-stalls. I am not precise ? ” 

“Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly 
well bred? . . . behaviour, talk — her English.” 

“I trench on Mr. Durance replying. Her English is 
passable. You may hear ...” 

“Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod 
English and excited manners imposed upon Nesta! ” 

“It would not be my opinion.” 

“Did not impose on her! ” 

“Not many would impose on Nesta Radnor for long.” 

“ Think what that says, Dartrey ! ” 

“You have had a detestable version of the story.” 

“Because an excited creature thanks God to you for 
having met her! ” 

“She may. She ’s a better woman for having met her. 
Don’t suppose we ’re for supernatural conversions. The 


NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTKEY FENELLAN 381 

woman makes no show of that. But she has found a good 
soul among her sex — her better self in youth, as one 
guesses; and she is grateful — feels farther from exile in 
consequence. She has found a lady to take her by the 
hand ! — ■ not a common case. She can never go to the 
utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if she says it; 
I say it. You have heard the story from one of your 
conventional gentlemen.’^ 

A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He 
has not your ideas on these matters, Dartrey. He is very 
sensitive ... on Hesta’s behalf.^’ 

“With reference to marriage. I ^11 own I prefer another 
kind of gentleman. I Ve had my experience of that kind 
of gentleman. Many of the kind have added their spot to 
the outcasts abominated for uncleanness — in holy unction. 
Many? — I won’t say all; but men who consent to hear 
black words pitched at them , and help to set good women 
facing away from them, are pious dolts or rascal dogs of 
hypocrites. They, if you T1 let me quote Colney Durance 
to you to-day — and how is it he is not in favour ? — they 
are tempting the Lord to turn the pillars of Society into 
pillars of salt. Down comes the house. And priests can 
rest in sight of it ! — They ought to be dead against the 
sanctimony that believes it excommunicates when it curses. 
The relationship is not dissolved so cheaply, though our 
Society affects to think it is. Barmby ^s off to the East 
End of this London, Victor informs me: — good fellow! 
And there he T1 be groaning over our vicious nature. 
Nature is not more responsible for vice than she is for 
inhumanity. Both bad, but the latter ’s the worse of the 
two.” 

Nataly interposed: “I see the contrast, and see whom 
it ’s to strike.” 

Dartrey sent a thought after his meaning. “Hardly 
that. Let it stand. He ^s only one with the world: but 
he shares the criminal infamy for crushing hope out of its 
frailest victims. They ^re that — no sentiment. What a 
world, too, look behind it! — brutal because brutish. The 
world may go hang: we expect more of your gentleman. 
To hear of Nesta down there, and doubt that she was 
about good work; — and come complaining! He had the 


382 


OKE OF OUK CONQUEEORS 


privilege of speaking to her, remonstrating, if he wished. 
There are men who think — men ! — the plucking of sinners 
out of the mire a dirty business. They depute it to cer- 
tain officials. And your women — it ^s the taste of the 
world to have them educated so, that they can as little 
take the humane as the enlightened view. Except, by 
the way, sometimes, in secret; — they have a sisterly 
breast. In secret, they do occasionally think as they feel. 
In public, the brass mask of the Idol they call Propriety 
commands or supplies their feelings and thoughts. I 
won’t repeat my reasons for educating them differently. 
At present we have but half the woman to go through life 
with — and thank you.” 

Dartrey stopped. Don’t be disturbed,” he added. 
‘‘There ’s no ground for alarm. Not of any sort.” 

Nataly said : “ What name ? ” 

“Her name is Mrs. Marsett.” 

“ The name is . . . ? ” 

“ Captain Marsett : will be Sir Edward. He came back 
from the Continent yesterday.” 

A fit of shuddering seized Nataly. It grew in violence, 
and speaking out of it, with a pause of sickly empty 
chatter of the jaws, she said: “Always that name ? ” 

“Before the maiden name ? May have been or not.” 

“Not, you say ? ” 

“I don’t accurately know.” 

Dartrey sprang to his legs. “ My dear soul ! dear friend 
— one of the best ! if we go on fencing in the dark, there ’ll 
be wounds. Your. way of taking this affair disappointed 
me. Now I understand. It ’s the disease of a trouble, to 
fly at comparisons. No real one exists. I wished to pro- 
tect the woman from a happier sister’s judgement, to save 
you from alarm concerning Nesta: — quite groundless, if 
you ’ll believe me. Come, there ’s plenty of benevolent 
writing abroad on these topics now: facts are more looked 
at, and a good woman may join us in taking them without 
the horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given 
to claim distinction from the luckless. A girl who ’s un- 
protected may go through adventures before she fixes, and 
be a creature of honest intentions. Better if protected, 
we all agree. Better also if the world did not favour the 


NATALY, NESTA, AND DABTREY FENELLAN 383 

girPs multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing 
with facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am 
glad to say, Victor recognizes what corruption that spread 
of wealth is accountable for. And now I must go and 
have a talk with the — what a change from the blue but- 
terfly ! Eaglet, T ought to have said. I dine with you, 
for Victor may bring news.’’ 

Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey ? ” 

He makes it wherever he steps.” 

^^He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell 
Hesta I have to lie down after talking. She has a child’s 
confidence in you.” 

A man of middle age ! he said to himself. It is the 
particular ejaculation which tames the senior whose heart 
is for a dash of holiday. He resolved that the mother 
might trust to the discretion of a man of his age ; and he 
went down to Hesta, grave with the weight his count of 
years should give him. Seeing her, the light of what he 
now knew of her was an ennobling equal to celestial. Eor 
this fair girl was one of the active souls of the world — his 
dream to discover in woman’s form. She, the little Hesta, 
the tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though she 
was, already in the fight with evil : a volunteer of the army 
of the simply Christian. The worse for it ? Sowerby would 
think so. She was not of the order of young women who, 
in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with 
evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, 
and are the ornaments of their country, glory of a country 
prizing ornaments higher than qualities. 

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of 
things revealed by Mrs. Marsett — not incredulous of the 
girl’s heroism : that capacity he caught and gauged in her 
shape of head, cut of mouth, and the measurements he was 
accustomed to make at a glance : — but her beauty, or the 
form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having 
set foot of thought in our fens. Here and far there we 
meet a young saint vowed to service along by those dismal 
swamps : and saintly she looks ; not of this earth. Hesta 
was of the blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or 
woman comparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch 
to lift the spotted of her sex ? He was puzzled by Nesta’s 


384 


ONE OF OtJK CONQUERORS 


unlikeness in deeds and in aspect. He remembered her 
eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her ; 
presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind. His 
doubts cleared off. Then the question came, How could a 
girl of heroical character be attached to the man Sowerby ? 
That entirely passed belief. 

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing? 
Her tones were singularly vibrating. 

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, 
she said : I fancy I am in disgrace with my mother.’’ 

You have a suspicion why ? ” said he. 
have.” 

She would have told him why : the words were at her 
lips. Previous to her emotion on the journey home, the 
words would have come out. They were arrested by the 
thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in him draw- 
ing her to be able to speak of scarlet matter, was personally 
worshipped. 

He attributed the full rose upon her cheeks to the for- 
bidding subject. 

To spare pain, he said : ^^No misunderstanding with the 
dear mother will last the day through. Can I help?” 

Oh, Captain Dartrey ! ” 

Drop the captain. Dartrey will do.” 

How could I ! ” 

You ’re not wanting in courage, Nesta.” 

Hardly for that ! ” 

By-and-by, then.” 

Though I could not say Jfr. Fenellan.” 

You see ; Dartrey, it must be.” 

If I could ! ” 

But the fellow is not a captain : and he is a friend, an 
old friend, very old friend : he ’ll be tipped with grey in a 
year or two.” 

I might be bolder then.” 

Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling 
your friends by their names.” 

Her nature rang to the implication. ^^I am not bound.” 

Dartrey hung fast, speculating on her visibly ; I heard 
you were.” 

^^Ko. I must be free.” 


NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY JENELLAN 385 


It is not an engagement ? ’’ 

Will you laugh ? — I have never quite known. My 
father desired it : and my desire is to please him. I think 
I am vain 'enough to think I read through blinds and 
shutters. The engagement ^ what there was — has been, 
to my reading, broken more than once. I have not con- 
sidered it, to settle my thoughts on it, until lately : and 
now I may suspect it to be broken. I have given cause — 
if it is known. There is no blame elsewhere. I am not 
unhappy. Captain Dartrey.^’ 

Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta 
judges the engagement to be broken ? 

She was mentally phrasing before she said: Absence.’^ 

He was here yesterday.’’ 

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as 
of sight drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of won- 
derment. Then I understand ; it enlightens me. My 
own mother ! — my poor mother ! he should have come to 
me. I was the guilty person, not she; and she is the 
sufferer. That, if in life were direct retribution! — but 
the very meaning of having a heart, is to suffer through 
others or for them.” 

You have soon seen that, dear girl,” said Dartrey. 

So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames 
me 1 ” ISTesta sighed ; she took a sharp breath. You ? do 
you blame me too ? ” 

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous 
divination and heavenly candour. 

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval 
would not be honourable advantage taken of the rival con- 
demning ; and he said : Blame ? Some think it is not 
always the right thing to do the right thing. I Ve made 
mistakes, with no bad design. A good mother’s view is not 
often wrong.” 

You pressed my hand,” she murmured. 

That certainly had said more. 

Glad to again,” he responded. It was uttered airily 
and was meant to be as lightly done. 

Hesta did not draw back her hand. I feel strong when 
you press it.” Her voice wavered, and as when we hear a 
flask sing thin at the Ailing, ceased upon evidence of a heart 

25 


386 


ONE OF -OUR CONQUERORS 


surcharged. How was he to relax the pressure ! — he had 
to give her the strength she craved : and he vowed it should 
be but for half a minute, half a minute longer. 

Her tears fell ; she eyed him steadily ; she had the look 
of sunlight in shower. 

Oldish men are the best friends for you, I suppose/’ he 
said ; and her gaze turned elusive phrases to vapour. 

He was compelled to see the fiery core of the raincloud 
lighting it for a revealment, that allowed as little as it re- 
tained of a shadow of obscurity. 

The sight was keener than touch and the run of blood 
with blood to quicken slumbering seeds of passion. 

But here is the place of broken ground and tangle, which 
calls to honourable men, not bent on sport, to be wary to 
guard the gunlock. He stopped the word at his mouth. It 
was not in him to stop or moderate the force of his eyes. 
She met them with the slender unbendingness that was her 
own ; a feminine of inspirited manhood. There was no soft 
expression, only the direct shot of light, on both sides ; 
conveying as much as is borne from sun to earth, from 
earth to sun. And when such an exchange has come 
between the two, they are past plighting, they are the 
wedded one. 

Hesta felt it, without asking whether she was loved. 
She was his. She had not a thought of the word of love or 
the being beloved. Showers of painful blissfulness went 
through her, as the tremours of a shocked frame, while she 
sat quietly, showing scarce a sign ; and after he had let her 
hand go, she had the pressure on it. The quivering intense 
of the moment of his eyes and grasp was lord of her, lord 
of the day and of all days coming. That is how Love slays 
Death. Never did girl so give her soul. 

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to 
a man untrusted for the character she worshipped. But 
she could have given it to Dartrey, despite his love of 
another, because it was her soul, without any of the crav- 
ings, except to bestow. 

He perceived that he had been carried on for the number 
of steps which are countless miles and do not permit the 
retreat across the desert behind ; and he was in some amaze- 
ment at himself, remindful of the different nature of our 


NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTEEY EENELLAN 387 


restraining power when we have a couple playing on it. 
Yet here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of 
young life again : and a brave girl ; and she bled for the 
weak, had no shrinking from the women underfoot : for the 
reason that she was a girl sovereignly pure, angelically 
tender. Was there a point of honour to hold him back ? 

Nataly entered the room. She kissed Nesta, and sat 
silent. 

Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out ? 
Nesta said. 

We have spoken,’’ her mother replied, vexed by the 
unmaidenly allusion to that theme. 

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it ? 
— but that the. Why should I speak of you to him ? — struck 
the louder note in her bosom : and then. What is there that 
this girl cannot guess ! — filled the mother’s heart with 
apprehensive dread : and an inward cry. What things will 
she not set going, to have them discussed ! and the appal- 
ling theme, sitting offensive though draped in their midst, 
was taken for a proof of the girl’s unblushingness. After 
standing as one woman against the world so long, Nataly 
was relieved to be on the side of a world now convictedly 
unjust to her in the confounding of her with the shameless. 
Her mind had taken the brand of that thought : — And 
Nesta had brought her to it : — And Dudley Sowerby, a 
generous representative of the world, had kindly, having the 
deputed power to do so, sustained her, only partially blam- 
ing Nesta, not casting them off; as the world, with which 
Nataly felt, under a sense of the protection calling up all 
her gratitude to young Dudley, would have approved his 
doing. 

She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar 
to the tediously strained, who are being more than com- 
monly tried — persecuted, as they say when they are not 
supplicating their tyrannical Authority for aid. The world 
will continue to be indifferent to their view of it and be- 
haviour toward it until it ceases to encourage the growth of 
hypocrites. 

These are moments when the faces we are observing drop 
their charm, showing us our perversion internal, if we could 
but reflect, to see it. Very many thousand times above 


388 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Dudley Sowerby, Nataly ranked Dartrey Denellan ; and still 
she looked at him, where he sat beside Nesta, ungenially, 
critical of the very features, jealously in the interests of 
Dudley ; and recollecting, too, that she had once prayed for 
one exactly resembling Dartrey Fenellan to be her Nesta’s 
husband. But, as she would have said, that was before the 
indiscretion of her girl had shown her to require for her 
husband a man whose character and station guaranteed 
protection instead of inciting to rebellion. And Dartrey, 
the loved and prized, was often in the rebel ranks ; he was 
dissatisfied with matters as they are ; was restless for action, 
angry with a country denying it to him ; he made enemies, 
he would surely bring down inquiries about Nesta’s head, 
and cause the forgotten or quiescent to be stirred ; he would 
scarcely be the needed hand for such a quiver of the light- 
nings as Nesta was. 

Dartrey read Nataly’s brows. This unwonted uncomeli- 
ness of hers was an indication to one or other of our dusky 
pits, not a revealing. 


CHAPTEE XXXIX 

A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 

He read her more closely when Arlington brought in the 
brown paper envelope of the wires — to which the mate of 
Victor ought to have become accustomed*. She took it ; her 
eyelids closed, and her features were driven to whiteness. 

Only these telegrams,” she said, in apology. 

Lakelands on fire ? ” Dartrey murmured to Nesta; and 
she answered: should not be sorry.” 

Nataly coldly asked her why she would not be sorry. 

Dartrey interposed : I ’in sure she thinks Lakelands 
worries her mother.” 

^^That ranks low among the worries,” Nataly sighe(i 
opening the envelope. 

Nesta touched her arm : Mother! even before Captain 
Dartrey, if you will let me ! ” — she turned to him : — 


A CHAPTER LN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 389 


before at the end of her breath she said : Dartrey 

Fenellan. You shall see my whole heart, motheiV^ 

Her mother looked from her at him. 

Victor returns by the last train. He telegraphs that 
he dines with — Slie handed the paper to Dartrey. 

Marsett/^ he read aloud ; and she flushed ; she was angry 
with him for not knowing that the name was a term of 
opprobrium flung at her. 

It \s to tell you he has done what he thought good/’ said 
Dartrey. In other words, as I interpret, he has completed 
his daughter’s work. So we won’t talk about it till he comes. 
You have no company this evening?” 

Oh ! there is a pause to-night ! It ’s nearly as unceas- 
ing as your brother Simeon’s old French lady in the ronde 
with her young bridegroom, till they danced her to pieces. 
I do get now and then an hour’s repose,” Nataly added, 
with a vision springing up of the person to whom the story 
had applied. 

My dear, you are a good girl to call me Dartrey,” the 
owner of the name said to Nesta. 

Nataly saw them both alert, in the terrible manner pecu- 
liar to both, for the directest of the bare statements. She 
could have protested, that her love of truth was on an 
equality with theirs ; and certainly, that her regard for 
decency was livelier. Pass the deficiency in a man. But 
a girl who could speak, by allusion, of Mrs. Marsett — of 
the existence of a Mrs. Marsett — in the presence of a 
man : and he excusing, encouraging : and this girl her own 
girl ; — it seemed to her that the world reeled ; she could 
hardly acknowledge the girl; save under the penitential 
admission of her sin’s having found her out. 

She sent Nesta to ller room when they went upstairs to 
dress, unable to endure her presence after seeing her show 
a placid satisfaction at Dartrey’s nod to the request for him 
to sleep in the house that night. It was not at all a gleam 
of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner of saying. 
One drop more in my cup of good fortune ! — an absurd and 
an offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind 
that they are ! 

For were it known, and surely the happening of it would 
be known, that Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the Nesta of 


390 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


no name, who was the abominable Mrs. Marsett’s friend, a 
whirlwind with a trumpet would sweep them into the wilder- 
ness on a blast frightfiiller than any ever heard. 

Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl’s embrace, 
against whom her door was jealously locked. She hoped 
those two would talk much, madly if they liked, during 
dinner, that she might not be sensible, through any short 
silence, of the ardour animating them : especially glowing 
in Nesta, ready behind her quiet mask to come brazenly 
forth. But both of them were mercilessly ardent ; and a 
sickness of the fear, that they might fall on her to capture 
her and hurry her along with them perforce of the allayed, 
once fatal, inflammable element in herself, shook the warmth 
from her limbs : causing her to say to herself aloud in a 
ragged hoarseness, very strangely : Every thought of mine 
now has a physical effect on me ! 

They had not been two minutes together when she de- 
scended to them. Yet she saw the girl’s heart brimming, 
either with some word spoken to her or for joy of an un- 
maidenly confession. During dinner they talked, without 
distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was 
manifestly another drop in Nesta’s foolish happy cup. 
Could it be all because Dartrey Eenellan countenanced her 
acquaintance with that woman ? The mother had lost hold 
of her. The tortured mother had lost hold of herself. 

Dartrey, in the course of the evening, begged to hear the 
contralto ; and Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the 
admission in her blank mind of the truth of man’s list of 
charges against her sex, starting from their capriciousness : 
for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had 
now a desire for company, for stolid company or giddy, an 
ocean of it. This led to her thinking that the world of 
serious money-getters, and feasts, and the dance, the 
luxurious displays, and the reverential Sunday service, will 
always ultimately prove itself right in opposition to critics 
and rebels, and to anyone vainly trying to stand alone : and 
the thought annihilated her ; for she was past the age of the 
beginning again, and no footing was left for an outsider not 
self-justified in being where she stood. She heard Dartrey ’s 
praise of Nesta’s voice for tearing her mother’s bosom with 
notes of intolerable sweetness ; and it was haphazard irony, 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 391 


no doubt ; we do not the less bleed for the accident of a 
shot. 

At last, after midnight Victor arrived. 

Xesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. 

Pray, go, dear,^^ her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. 

Some time to-morrow,’^ said he ; and she forbore to beseech 
him. 

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey’s 
hand for the good-night and deliberately putting her lips 
to it. 

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong 
thing done, was to do another ? Nataly could merely 
observe. A voice pertaining to no one present, said in 
her ear: Mothers have publicly slapped their daughters’ 
faces for less than that ! — It was the voice of her inca- 
pacity to cope with the girl. She watched Nesta’s passage 
from the room, somewhat affected by the simple bearing 
for which she was reproaching her. 

‘^And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this 
year ! ” Victor exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for 
pitying his girl. promised Fredi she should never count 
a year without Highlands or Alps. You remember, mama ? 
— down in the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit of 
bundle, Dartrey ! — we had laid her in her bed ; she was 
about seven or eight ; and there she lay wide awake. — 
‘ What’s Fredi thinking of ? ’ — ^ I ’m thinking of the tops 
of the mountains at night, dada.’ — She would climb them 
now ; she has the legs.” 

Nataly said : You have some report to make. You 
dined with those people ? ” 

The Marsetts : yes : — well-suited couple enough. It ’s 
to happen before Winter ends — at once; before Christmas; 
positively before next Spring. Fredi’s doing ! He has to 
manage, arrange. — She ’s a good-looking woman, good 
height, well-rounded ; well-behaved, too : she won’t make 
a bad Lady Marsett. Every time that woman spoke of our 
girl, the tears jumped to her eyelids.” 

^^Come to me before you go to bed,” Nataly said, rising, 
her voice foundering. Good-night, Dartrey.” 

She turned to the door ; she could not trust herself to 
shake hands with composure. Not only was it a nauseous 


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ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


mixture she was forced to gulp from Victor, it burned like 
a poison. 

“Eeally Fredi’s doing — chiefly/^ said Victor, as soon as 
Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the smok- 
ing-room. I played the man of pomp with Marsett — good 
heavy kind of creature : attached to the woman. She ^s the 
better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Mar- 
sett. I harped on Major Worrell : my daughter insulted. 
He knew of it — spoke of you properly. The man offered 
all apologies; has told the Major he is no gentleman, not 
a fit associate for gentlemen : — quite so : — and has cut 
him dead. Will marry her, as I said, make her as worthy 
as he can of the honour of my daughter’s acquaintance. 
Eather comical grimace, when he vowed he ’d fasten the 
tie. He does n’t like marriage. But he can’t give her up. 
And she ’s for patronizing the institution. But she is ready 
to say good-bye to him : ^ rather than see the truest lady in 
the world insulted : ’ — her words. And so he swallows his 
dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish. Antecedents, I 
suppose : has to stomach them. But if a man’s fond of a 
woman — if he knows, he saves her from slipping lower — 
and it ’s an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its 
wheels : — I say, a woman who has a man to lean on, unless 
she ’s as downright corrupt as two or three of the men 
we ’ve known ; — upon jny word, Dartrey, I come round to 
some of your ideas on these mattters. It ’s this girl of 
mine, this wee bit of girl in her little nightshirt with the 
frill, astonishes me most : - — ■ thinking of the tops of the 
mountains at night ! ’ She has positively done the whole 
of this work- — main part. I smiled when I left the house, 
to have to own our little Fredi starting us all on the road. 
It seems, Marsett had sworn he would; amorous vow, you 
know ; he never came nearer to doing it. I hope it ’s his 
better mind now ; I do hope the man won’t have cause to 
yegyef it, Jle speaks of Kesta — sort of rustic tone of 
awe. Mrs. Marsett has impressed him. He expects the 
title soon, will leave the army — the poor plucked British 
army, as you call it ! — and lead the life of a country 
squire: hunting! Well, it’s not only the army, it’s over 
Great Britain, with this infernal wealth of ours ! — and all 
for pleasure — eh ? — or Paradise lost for a sugar plum ! 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 393 

Eh, Dartrey ? Upon my word, it appears to me, Esau’s the 
Englishman, Jacob the German, of these times. I wonder 
old Colney hasn’t said it. If we’re not plucked, as your 
regiments are of the officers who have learnt their work, 
we ’re emasculated : — the nation ’s half made-up of the 
idle and the servants of the idle.” 

^^Ay, and your country squires and your manufacturers 
contrive to give the army a body of consumptive louts fit 
for nothing else than to take the shilling — and not worth 
it,” said Dartrey. 

Sounds like old Colney,” Victor remarked to himself. 
^^But, believe me I’m ashamed of the number of servants 
who wait on me. It wouldn’t so much matter, as Skepsey 
says, if they were trained to arms and self-respect. That 
little fellow Skepsey ’s closer to the right notion, and the 
right practice, too, than any of us. With his Matilda 
Pridden ! He has jumped out of himself to the proper 
idea of women, too. And there ’s a man who has been 
up three times before the magistrates, and is considered a 
disorderl}^ subject — one among the best of English citi- 
zens, I declare ! I never think of Skepsey without the 
most extraordinary, witless kind of envy — as if he were 
putting in action an idea I once had and never quite got 
hold of again. The match for him is Fredi. She threatens 
to be just as devoted, just as simple, as he. I positively 
doubt whether any of us could stop her, if she had set 
herself to do a thing she thought right.” 

I should not like to think our trying it possible,” said 
Dartrey. 

All very well, but it’s a rock ahead. We shall have to 
alter our course, my friend, You know, I dined with that 
couple, after the private twenty minutes with Marsett: — 
he formally propounded the invitation, as we were close on 
his hour, rather late : and I wanted to make the woman 
happy, besides putting a seal of cordiality on his good in- 
tentions — politic ! And subsequently I heard from her, 
that — 3^011 ’ll think ^nothing of it ! — Fredi promised to 
stand by her at the altar.” 

Dartrey said, shrugging : She need n’t do that.” 

So we may say. You’re dealing with ISTesta Victoria, 
Spare me a contest with that girl, I undertake to manage 
any nian or woman living.” 


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ONE OF OUU CONQUERORS 


When the thing to be done is thought right by her.’* 

‘•But can we always trust her judgement, my dear 
Dartrey ? ” 

“ In this case, she would argue that her resolution to keep 
her promise would bind or help to bind Marsett to fulfil his 
engagement.” 

“ Odd, her mother has turned dead round in favour of that 
fellow Dudley Sowerby ! I don’t complain ; it suits ; but 
one thinks — eh ? — women ! ” 

“Well, yes, one thinks or should think, that if you insist 
on having women rooted to the bed of the river, they ’ll veer 
with the tides, like water-weeds, and no wonder.” 

“ Your heterodoxy on that subject is a mania, Dartrey. 
W^e can’t have women independent.” 

“ Then don’t be exclaiming about their vagaries.” 

Victor mused : “ It ’s wonderful : that little girl of mine ! 

— good height now : but what a head she has ! Oh, she ’ll 
listen to reason : only mark what I say : — with that quiet 
air of hers, the husband, if a young fellow, will imagine 
she ’s the most docile of wives in the world. And as to wife, 
I ’m not of the contrary opinion. But qua individual female, 
supposing her to have laid fast hold of an idea of duty, it ’s 
he who ’ll have to turn the corner second, if they ’re to trot 
in the yoke together. Or may it be an idea of service to a 
friend — or to her sex ! That Mrs. Marsett says she feels for 

— ‘bleeds’ for her sex. The poor woman didn’t show to 
advantage with me, because she was in a fever to please : — 
talks in jerks, hot phrases. She holds herself well. At the 
end of the dinner she behaved better. Odd, you can teach 
women with hints and a lead. But Marsett ’s Marsett to the 
end. Bather touching ! — the poor fellow said : Deuce of a 
bad look-out for me if Judith doesn’t have a child! First- 
rate sportsman, I hear. He should have thought of his 
family earlier. You know, Dartrey, the case is to be argued 
for the family as well. You won’t listen. And for Society 
too I Off you go.” 

A battery was opened on that wall of composite. 

“Ah, well,” said Victor. “But I may have to beg your 
help, as to the so-called promise to stand at the altar. I 
don’t mention it upstairs.” 

He went to Nataly’s room. 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. IVIARSETT 395 

She was considerately treated, and was aware of being 
dandled, that she might have sleep. 

She consented to it, in a loathing of the topic. — Those 
women invade us — we cannot keep them out! was her 
inward cry : with a reverberation of the unfailing accom- 
paniment: — The world holds you for one of them I 

Victor tasked her too much when his perpetual readiness 
to doat upon his girl for whatever she did, set him exalting 
ISTesta’s conduct. She thought : Was ISTesta so sympathetic 
with her mother of late by reason of a moral insensibility 
to the offence ? 

This was her torture through the night of a labouring 
heart, that travelled to one dull shock, again and again 
repeated : — the apprehended sound, in fact, of Dudley 
Sowerby’s knock at the street door. Or sometimes a foot- 
man handed her his letter, courteously phrased to withdraw 
from the alliance. Or else he came to a scene with ISTesta 
and her mother was dragged into it, and the intolerable 
subject steamed about her. The girl was visioned as deadly. 
She might be indifferent to the protection of Dudley’s name. 
Robust, sanguine, Victor’s child, she might — her mother 
listened to a devil’s whisper: — but no; ISTesta’s aim was at 
the heights ; she was pure in mind as in body. No, but the 
world would bring the accusation ; and the world would 
trace the cause : Heredity, it would say. Would it say 
falsely ? Nataly harped on the interrogation until she felt 
her existence dissolving to a dark stain of the earth, and she 
found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting 
that another would follow, speculating on the cruel force 
which keeps us to the act of breathing. — Though I could 
draw wild blissful breath if I were galloping across the 
moors ! her worn heart said to her youth : and out of ken of 
the world, I could regain a portion of my self-esteem. — 
Nature thereat renewed her old sustainment with gentle 
murmurs, that were supported by Dr. Themisoii’s account of 
the virtuous married lady who chafed at the yoke on behalf 
of her sex, and deemed the independent union the ideal. 
Nataly’s brain had a short gallop over moorland. It brought 
her face to face with Victor’s girl, and she dropped once 
more to her remorse in herself and her reproaches of Nesta. 
The girl had inherited from her father something of the 


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ONE OF OUK CONQUERORS 


cataract’s force which won its way by catching or by 
mastering, uprooting, ruining ! 

In the morning she was heavily asleep. Victor left word 
with Nesta, that the dear jiiother was not to be disturbed. 
Consequently, when Dudley called to see Mrs. Victor Ead- 
nor, he was informed that Miss Eadnor would receive him. 

Their interview lasted an hour. 

Dudley came to Victor in the City about luncheon time. 
His perplexity of countenance was eloquent. He had, be- 
fore seeing the young lady, digested an immense deal: 
more, as it seemed to him, than any English gentleman 
should be asked to consume. She now referred him to her 
father, who had spent a day in Brighton, and would, she 
said, explain whatever there was to be explained. But 
she added that if she was expected to abandon a friend, 
she could not. Dudley had argued with her upon the 
nature of friendship, the measurement of its various 
dues ; he had lectured on the choice of friends, the impossi- 
bility for young ladies, necessarily inexperienced, to dis- 
tinguish the right class of friends, the dangers they ran in 
selecting friends unwarranted by the stamp of honourable 
families. 

And what did Fredi say to that ? ” Victor inquired. 

^^Miss Eadnor said — I may be dense, I cannot compre- 
hend — that the precepts were suitable for seminaries of 
Pharisees. When it is a question of a young lady associat- 
ing with a notorious woman ! ” 

^‘Hot notorious. You spoil your case if you ‘speak ex- 
tremely,’ as a friend says. I saw her yesterday. She 
worships ‘ Miss Eadnor.’ ” 

“Hesta will know when she is older; she will thank 
me,” Dudley said hurriedly. “As it is at present, I may 
reckon, I hope, that the association ceases. Her name — I 
have to consider my family.” 

“Good anchorage ! You must fight it out with the girl. 
And depend upon this — you ’re not the poorer for being the 
husband of a girl of character ; unless you try to bridle her. 
She belongs to her time. I don’t mind owning to you, she 
has given me a lead. — Fredi ’ll be merry to-night. Here ’s 
a letter I have from the Sanfredini, dated Milan, fresh 
this morning ; invitation to bring the god-child to her villa 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 397 


on Como in May; desirous to embrace her. She wrote to 
the office. Not a word of her duque. She has pitched 
him to the winds. You may like to carry it off to Fredi 
and please her.’^ 

1 have business/’ Dudley replied. 

Away to it, then ! ” said Victor. You stand by me ? 
— we expect our South London borough to be open in 
January; early next year, at least; may be February. You 
have family interest there.” 

Personally, I will do my best,” Dudley said; and he 
escaped, feeling, with the universal censor’s angry spite, that 
the revolutions of the world had made one of the wealthiest 
of City men the head of a set of Bohemians. And there are 
eulogists of the modern tim^ ! And the man’s daughter 
was declared to belong to it ! A visit in May to the Italian 
cantatrice separated from her husband, would render the 
maiden an accomplished flinger of caps over the wind- 
mills. 

At home Victor discovered that there was not much more 
than a truce between Nesta and Nataly. He had a medical 
hint from Dr. Themison, and he counselled his girl to 
humour her mother as far as could be : particularly in re- 
lation to Dudley, whom Nataly now, woman-like, after 
opposing, strongly favoured. How are we ever to get a clue 
to the labyrinthine convolutions and changeful motives of 
the sex ! Dartrey’s theories were absurd. Did Nataly 
think them dangerous for a young woman ? The guess 
hinted at a clue of some sort to the secret of her veering. 

Mr. Sowerby left me with an adieu,” said Nesta. 

Mr. Sowerby ! My dear, he is bound, bound in honour, 
bound at heart. You did not dismiss him ? ” 

repeated the word he used. I thought of mother. 
The blood leaves her cheeks at a disappointment now. She 
has taken to like him.” 

Why, you like him ! ” 

I could not vow.” 

Tush.” 

^^Ah, don’t press me, dada. But you will see, he has 
disengaged himself.” 

He had done it, though not in formal speech. Slow di- 
gestion of his native antagonism to these Bohemians, to say 


398 


OKE OF OITR CONQUERORS 


nothing of his judicial condemnation of them, brought him 
painfully round to the writing of a letter to Nataly ; cun- 
ningly addressed to the person on whom his instinct told 
him he had the strongest hold. 

She schooled herself to discuss the detested matter form- 
ing Dudley’s grievance and her own with Nesta ; and it was 
a woeful half-hour for them. But Nataly was not the 
weeper. 

Another interview ensued between Nesta and her suitor. 
Dudley bore no resemblance to Mr. Barmby, who refused to 
take the word no from her, and had taken it, and had gone 
to do holy work, for which she revered him. Dudley took 
the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more 
her mother or her father, inspired by him, came interceding, 
her mother actually supplicating. So that the reality of 
Dudley’s love rose to conception like a London dawn over 
Nesta; and how, honourably, decently, positively, to sever 
herself from it, grew to be an ill-visaged problem. She 
glanced in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help ; she had her 
wild thoughts. Having once called him Dartrey, the vir- 
ginal barrier to thoughts was broken ; and but for love of 
her father, for love and pity of her mother, she would have 
ventured the step to make the man who had her whole being 
in charge accept or reject her. Nothing else appeared in 
prospect. Her father and mother were urgently one to 
favour Dudley ; and the sensitive gentleman presented him- 
self to receive his wound and to depart with it. But always 
he returned. At last, as if under tuition, he refrained from 
provoking a wound ; he stood there to win her upon any 
terms ; and he was a handsome figure, acknowledged by the 
damsel to be increasing in good looks as more and more his 
pretensions became distasteful to her. The slight cast of 
sourness on his lower features had almost vanished, his 
nature seemed to have enlarged. He complimented her for 
her “ generous benevolence,” vaguely, yet with evident sin- 
cereness; he admitted, that the modern world is ^^attempt- 
ing difficulties with at least commendable intentions ; ” and 
that the position of women demands improvement, con- 
sideration for them also. He said feelingly : They have 
to bear extraordinary burdens ! ” There he stopped. 

The sharp intelligence fronting him understood that this 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 399 

compassionate ejaculation was the point where she, too, 
must cry halt. He had, however — still under tuition, per- 
haps — withdrawn his voice from the pursuit of her; and 
so she in gratitude silenced her critical mind beneath a 
smooth conceit of her having led him two steps to a broader 
tolerance. Suscejptible as she was, she did not influence 
him without being affected herself in other things than her 
vanity : his prudishness affected her. Only when her heart 
flamed did she' disdain that real haven of refuge, with its 
visionary mount of superiority, offered by Society to its 
elect, in the habit of ignoring the sins it fosters under cloak ; 
— not less than did the naked barbaric time, and far more 
to the vitiation of the soul. He fancied he was moulding 
her ; therefore winning her. It followed that he had the 
lover’s desire for assurance of exclusive possession ; and re- 
flecting that he had greatly pardoned, he grew exacting. 
He mentioned his objections to some of Mr. Dartrey Fenel- 
lan’s ideas. 

Hesta replied : I have this morning had two letters to 
make me happy.” 

A provoking evasion. He would rather have seen antag- 
onism bridle and stiffen her figure. Is one of them from 
that gentleman ? ” 

^^One is from my dear friend Louise de Seilles. She 
comes to me early next month.” 

‘‘The other?” 

“The other is also from a friend.” 

“ A dear friend ? ” 

“ Not so dear. Her letter gives me happiness.” 

“ She writes — not from France : from . . . ? you tempt 
me to guess.” 

“ She writes to tell me that Mr. Dartrey Fenellan has 
helped her in a way to make her eternally thankful.” 

The place she writes from is . . . ? ” 

The drag of his lips betrayed his enlightenment. He in- 
sisted on doubting. He demanded assurance. 

“ It matters in no degree,” she said. 

Dudley “ thought himself excusable for inquiring.” 

She bowed gently. 

The stings and scorpions and degrading itches of this 
nest of wealthy Bohemians enraged him. 


400 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


Are you — I beg to ask — are you still : — I can hardly 
think it — Nesta ! — I surely have a claim to advise : — it 
cannot be with your mother’s consent : — in communication, 
in correspondence with 

Again she bowed her head, saying : ‘^It is true.’’ 

With that person ? ” 

He could not but look the withering disgust of the 
modern world in a conservative gentleman who has been 
lured to go with it a little way, only to be bitten. I de- 
cline to believe it,” he said with forcible sound. 

She is married,” was the rather shameless, exasperating 
answer. 

Married or not ! ” he cried, and murmured : I have 
borne — These may be Mr. Dartrey Fenellan’s ideas ; 
they are not mine. I have — Something at least is due to 
me. Ask any lady : — there are clergymen, I know, 
clergymen who are for uplifting — quite right, but not 
associating : — to call one of them a friend ! Ask any lady, 
any ! Your mother ...” 

“ I beg you will not distress my mother,” said Nesta. 

I beg to know whether this correspondence is to con- 
tinue ? ” said Dudley. 

^^All my life, if I do not feel dishonoured by it.” 

You are.” He added hastily : Counsels of prudence : 
— there is not a lady living who would tell you otherwise. 
At all events, in public opinion, if it were known — and it 
would certainly be known, — a lady, wife or spinster, would 
suffer — would not escape the — at least shadow of defile- 
ment from relationship, any degree of intimacy with . . . 
hard words are wholesome in such a case : — Houch pitch,’ 
yes ! My sense is coherent.” 

Quite,” said Nesta. 

And you do not agree with me ? ” 

I do not.” 

Do you pretend to be as able to judge as I ? ” 

^^In this instance, better.” 

“Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You 
may depend upon it, the world is not wrong when it forbids 
young ladies to have cognizance with women leading dis- 
ordeidy lives.” 

Only the women, Mr. Sowerby ? ” 


A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT 401 
Men, too, of course.^’ 

You do not exclude the men from Society.’^ 

Oh ! one reads that kind of argument in books.^’ 

Oh ! the worthy books, then. I would read them, if I 
could find them.^^ 

^^They are banned by self-respecting readers.’^ 

It grieves me to think differently.’^ 

Dudley looked on this fair girl, as yet innocent girl ; and 
contrasting her with the foulness of the subject she dared 
discuss, it seemed to him that a world which did not 
puff at her and silence, if not extinguish, was in a state of 
liquefaction. 

Eemembering his renewed repentances in absence, he 
said : I do hope you may come to see that the views 
shared by your mother and me are not erroneous.” 

‘‘But do nob distress her,” Hesta implored him. “She 
is not well. When she has grown stronger, her kind heart 
will move her to receive the lady, so that she may not be 
deprived of the society of good women. I shall hope she 
will not disapprove of me. I cannot forsake a friend.” 

“ I beg to say good-bye,” said Dudley. 

She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke ; and so 
little startling was it, that she might have fancied it 
expected, save for her knowing herself too serious to have 
played at wiles to gain her ends. 

He “ wished her prudent advisers.” 

She thanked him. “ In a few days, Louise de Seilles 
will be here.” 

A Frenchwoman and Papist ! was the interjection of his 
twist of brows. 

Surely I must now be free ? she thought when he had 
covered his farewell under a salutation regretful in 
frostiness. 

A week later, she had the embrace of her Louise, and 
Armandine was made happy with a piece of Parisian 
riband. 

Winter was rapidly in passage : changes were visible 
everywhere ; Earth and House of Commons and the South 
London borough exhibited them ; Mrs. Burman was the 
sole exception. To the stupefaction of physicians, in a 
manner to make a sane man ask whether she was not being 

26 


402 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


retained as an instrument for one of the darker purposes 
of Providence — and where are we standing if we ask such 
things ? — she held on to her thread of life. 

February went by. And not a word from Themison ; nor 
from Carling, nor from the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, nor 
from Jarniman. That is to say, the two former accepted 
invitations to grand dinners ; the two latter acknowledged 
contributions to funds in which they were interested ; but 
they had apparently grown to consider Mrs. Burman as an 
establishment, one of our fixtures. On the other hand, there 
was nothing to be feared from her. Lakelands feared 
nothing : the entry into Lakelands was decreed for the 
middle of April. Those good creatures enclosed the poor 
woman and nourished her on comfortable fiction. So the 
death of the member for the South London borough (fifteen 
years younger than the veteran in maladies) was not to be 
called premature, and could by no possibity lead to an 
exposure of the private history of the candidate for his 
vacant seat. 


CHAPTER XL 

AN EXPIATION 

Xataly had fallen to be one of the solitary who have no 
companionship save with the wound they nurse, to chafe it 
rather than try at healing. So rational a mind as she had 
was not long in outliving mistaken impressions ; she could 
distinguish her girks feeling, and her aim ; she could speak 
on tlie subject with Dartrey, and still her wound bled on. 
Louise de Seilles comforted her partly, through an exalta- 
tion of Xesta. Mademoiselle, however, by means of a change 
of tone and look when Dudley Sowerby and Dartrey Fenellan 
were the themes, showed a too pronounced preference of 
the more unstable one : — or rather, the man adventurous 
out of the world’s highways, whose image, as husband of 
such a daughter as hers, smote the wounded mother with a 
chillness. Mademoiselle’s occasional thrill of fervency in 
an allusion to Dartrey, might have tempted a suspicious 


AN EXPIATION 


403 


woman to indulge suppositions, accounting for the young 
Frenchwoman’s novel tenderness to England, of which 
Nesta proudly, very happily, boasted. The suspicion pro- 
posed itself, and was rejected: for not even the fever of 
an insane body could influence IN’ataly’s generous character, 
to let her moods divert and command her thoughts of 
persons. 

Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon 
everything about her ; with the one exception of the reason 
why she had come to favour Dudley, and how it was she 
had been smitten by that woman at Brighton to see herself 
in her position altogether with the world’s relentless, unex- 
amining hard eyes. Bitterness added, of Mrs. Marsett : She 
is made an honest woman ! — And there was a strain of the 
lower in Nataly, to reproach the girl for causing the reflec- 
tion to be cast on the unwedded. Otherwise her mind was 
open; she was of aid to Victor in his confusion over some 
lost Idea he had often touched on latterly. And she was 
the one who sent him ahead at a trot under a light, by say- 
ing : You would found a new and more stable aristocracy 
of the contempt of luxury : ” when he talked of combatting 
the Jews with a superior weapon. That being, in fact, as 
Colney Durance had pointed out to him, the weapon of self- 
conquest used by them before they fell away to flesh- 
pottery.” Was it his Idea? He fancied an aching at the 
back of his head when he speculated. But his Idea had 
been surpassingly luminous, alive, a creation ; and this came 
before him with the yellow skin of a Theory, bred, born of 
books. Though Nataly’s mention of the aristocracy of self- 
denying discipline struck a Lucifer in his darkness. 

Nesta likewise helped : but more in what she did than in 
what she said : she spoke intelligently enough to make him 
feel a certain increase of alarm, amounting to a cursory 
secret acknowledgement of it, both at her dealings with 
Dudley and with himself. She so quietly displaced the 
lady visiting him at the City offices. His girl’s disregard of 
hostile weather, and her company, her talk, delighted him : 
still he remonstrated, at her coming daily. She came : nor 
was there an instigation on the part of her mother, clearly 
none : her mother asked him once whether he thought she 
met the dreadful Brighton woman. His Fredi drove con- 


404 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


stantly to walk back beside liim Westward, as he loved to 
do whenever it was practicable ; and exceeding the flattery 
of his possession of the gallant daughter, her conversation 
charmed him to forget a disappointment caused by the 
defeat and entire exclusion of the lady visiting him so 
complimentarily for his advice on stocks, shares, mines, et 
csetera. The lady resisted ; she was vanquished, as the 
shades are displaced by simple apparition of daylight. 

His Fredi was like the daylight to him ; she was the very 
daylight to his mind, whatsoever their theme of converse : 
for by stimulating that ready but vagrant mind to quit the 
leash of the powerful senses and be aethereally excursive, she 
gave him a new enjoyment; which led to reflections^ — a 
sounding of Nature, almost a question to her, on the verge 
of a doubt. Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great 
Mother when we yield to the pressure of our natures for 
indulgence ? Is she, when translated intt) us, solely the 
imperious appetite ? Here was Fredi, his little Fredi — 
stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for all her 
fun and her sail on wings — lifting him to pleasures not 
followed by clamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet dis- 
coinposingly violent, appeals to Nature. They could be 
vindicated. Or could they, when they would not bear a 
statement of the case ? He could not imagine himself 
stating it namelessly to his closest friend — not to Simeon 
Fenellan. As for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him 
with shivers: — Young Dudley would have seemed a more 
possible confidant : — and he represented the Puritan world. 
— And young Dudley was getting over Fredi’s infatuation 
for the woman she had rescued : he was beginning to fancy 
he saw a right enthusiasm in it ; — in the abstract ; if only 
the fair maid would drop an unseemly acquaintance. He 
had called at the office to say so. Victor stammered the 
plea for him. 

Never, dear father,” came the smooth answer : a shocking 
answer in contrast with the tones. Her English was as 
lucid as her eyes when she continued up to the shock she 
dealt : Do not encourage a good man to waste his thoughts 
upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry 
him. I do not know whether he would marry me. He has 
my soul. I have no shame in saying I love him. It is to 


AN EXPIATION 


405 


love goodness, greatness of heart. He is a respecter of 
women — of all women ; not only the fortunate. He is the 
friend of the weaker everywhere. He has been proved in 
fire. He does not sentimentalize over poor women, as we 
know who scorns people for doing : — and that is better than 
hardness, meaning kindly. He is not one of the unwise 
advocates. He measures the forces against them. He reads 
their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my plans. 
He has not said, has not shown, he loves me. It is too' high 
a thought for me until I hear it.’’ 

Has your soul ! ” was all that Victor could reply, while 
the whole conception of Lakelands quaked under the crum- 
bling structure. 

Eemonstrauce, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to 
his lips and sank in dumbness. Her seeming intuition — 
if it was not a perception — of the point where submission 
to the moods of his nature had weakened his character, and 
required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious 
fear of his girl : and it was the more illuminatingly damna- 
tory for being recognized as the sentiment which no father 
should feel. He tried to think she ought not to be so wise 
of the things of the world. An effort to imagine a reproof, 
showed him her spirit through her eyes : in her deeds too : 
she had already done work on the road : — Colney Durance, 
Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of 
them, strongly backing her, upholding her. Victor could 
no longer so naturally name her Fredi. 

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tender- 
ness, when he ventured. When Dudley, calling on him in 
the City to discuss the candidature for the South London 
borough, named her Fredi, that he might regain a vantage 
of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victor as 
audacious. It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of 
the earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high 
pitch. He appeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered 
stings of pain; he offered himself; he made but one stipu- 
lation. Victor regretfully assured him, he feared he could 
do nothing. The thought of his entry into Lakelands, with 
Hesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of the place, 
grew dim. 

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at 


406 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


the new business as the braced swimmer on seas, which 
instantly he became, with an end in view to be gained. 

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to 
bed, and Nesta to be waiting for him, he reached home, and 
found Nataly in her sitting-room alone. Nesta was tired,’’ 
she said : we have had a scene ; she refuses Mr. Sowerby ; 
I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, pain- 
fully ; she blames him for disturbing me ; she will not see 
the right course : — a mother reads her daughter ! If my 
girl has not guidance ! — she means rightly, she is rash.” 

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling 
made her think with regard to Victor’s daughter — daughter 
also of the woman whom her hard conscience accused of 
inflammability. Here is a note from Dr. Themison, 
dear.” 

Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath. 

^^Drom Themison,” he said; he coughed. 

Don’t think to deceive me,” said she. have not 
read the contents, I know them.” 

The invitation at last, for to-morrow, Sunday, four p.m. 
Odd, that next day at eight of the evening I shall be 
addressing our meeting in the Theatre. Simeon speaks. 
Leaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory though he is. 
Those Tories are jollier fellows than — well, no wonder! 
There will be no surgical . . . the poor woman is very low. 
A couple of days at the outside. Of course, I go.” 

Hand me the note, dear.” 

It had to be given up, out of the pocket. 

But,” said Victor, the mention of you is merely 
formal.” 

She needed sleep : she bowed her head. 

Nataly was the first at the breakfast- table in the morn- 
ing, a fair Sunday morning. She was going to Mrs. John 
Cormyn’s Church, and she asked Nesta to come with her. 

She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having 
left Nesta with Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles undertook to 
bring Nesta home at the time she might choose. Fenellan, 
Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin, lunched and chatted. 
Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o’clock Victor’s 
carriage was at the door. He rose ; he had to keep an 
appointment. Nataly said to him publicly : I come too.” 


AN EXPIATION 


407 


He stared and nodded. In the carriage, he said : I hn 
driving to the Gardens, for a stroll, to have a look at the 
beasts. Sort of relief. Poor crazy woman ! — However, 
it ’s a comfort to her : so ! . . .^^ 

I like to see them,’’ said Nataly. I shall see her. I 
have to do it.” 

Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dis- 
suade his dear soul from this very foolish, totally unneces- 
sary, step. Alighting, he put the matter aside, for good 
angels to support his counsel at the final moment. 

Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys : they suggested no 
more than he would have had from prints ; they sprang 
no reflection, except that the coming hour was a matter of 
indifference to them. They were about him, and exercised 
so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mother 
monkey, relinquishing her society at sight of Nataly’s 
heave of the bosom. Southward, across the park, the dread 
house rose. He began quoting Colney Durance with relish 
while sarcastically confuting the cynic, who found much 
pasture in these Gardens. Over Southward, too, he would 
be addressing a popular assembly to-morrow evening. Be- 
tween now and then there was a ditch to jump. He put on 
the sympathetic face of grief. After all, a caged wild 
beast has n’t so bad a life,” he said. — To be well fed while 
they live, and welcome death as a release from the maladies 
they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy people : 
— creatures of prey ? horrible thought ! yet allied to his Idea, 
it seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them 
an example, in not troubling relatives and friends when 
they come to the gasp ! Mrs. Burman’s invitation loomed 
as monstrous — a final act of her cruelty. His skin pricked 
with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumping the 
ditch with him, as a relief — if she insisted on doing it. 
He hoped she would not, for the sake of her composure. 

It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter 
of an hour, less. The state of health of the invalid could 
bear only a few minutes. In any case, we are sure that the 
hour will pass. Our own arrive ? Certainly. Capital 
place for children ! ” he exclaimed. And here startlingly 
before him in the clusters of boys and girls, was the differ- 
ence between young ones and their elders feeling quite as 


408 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


young: the careless youngsters have not to go and sit in the 
room with a virulent old woman, and express penitence and 
what not, and hear words of pardon, after their holiday 
scamper and stare at the caged beasts. 

Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaint- 
ances, hitherto cleverly shunned. He nodded them off, after 
the brightest of greetings. 

Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated 
wild creatures, was exhausted. He fell to work at Nataly’s 
aristocracy of the contempt of luxury ; ” signifying, that 
we the wealthy will not exist to pamper flesh, but we live 
for the promotion of brotherhood : — ay, and that our 
England must make some great moral stand, if she is not 
to fall to the rear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts 
of the Idea : it evaporated when spoken. Still, this theme 
was almost an exorcism of Mrs. Burman. He consulted his 
watch. Thirteen minutes to four. I must be punctual,” 
he said. Nataly stepped faster. 

Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the 
horror of that place before. Put me down at the corner 
of the terrace, dear : I won’t drive to the door.” 

I come with you, Victor,” she replied. 

After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her re- 
solve, he saw she was firm : and he asked himself, whether 
he might not be constitutionally better adapted to persuade 
than to dissuade. The question thumped. Having that 
house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for the 
prospect of feeling his Nataly near him beneath the roof. 

You really insist, dear love ? ” he appealed to her : and 
her answer : It must be,” left no doubt : though he chose 
to say : Not because of standing by me ? ” And she said : 
^^For my peace, Victor.” They stepped to the pavement. 
The carriage was dismissed. 

Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to 
the funereal one : and the bell was tolled in the breast of 
each of the couple advancing with an air of calmness to the 
inevitable black door. 

Jarniman opened it. ^^His mistress was prepared to see 
them.” — Not like one near death. — They were met in the 
hall by the Eev. Groseman Buttermore. You will find a 
welcome,” was his reassurance to them, gently delivered, on 


AN EXPIATION 


409 


the stoop of a large person. His whispered tones were more 
agreeably deadening than his words. 

Mr. Buttermore ushered them upstairs. 

^^Can she bear it Victor said, and heard : ^^Her wish: 
ten minutes.’’ 

Soon over,” he murmured to Nataly, with a compassion- 
ate exclamation for the invalid. 

They rounded the open door. They were in the drawing- 
room. It was furnished as in the old time, gold and white, 
looking new ; all the same as of old, save for a division of 
silken hangings ; and these were pale blue : the colour pre- 
ferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at the ceiling, 
to bathe in a blank space out of memory. Here she lived, 
here she slept, behind the hangings. There was refresh- 
ingly that little difference in the arrangement of the room. 
The corner Northward was occupied by the grand piano ; 
and Victor had an inquiry in him: — tuned? He sighed, 
expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible 
that Nataly trembled, he perceived the Eev. Groseman 
Buttermore half across a heap of shawl-swathe on the sofa. 

Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die 
seated ; she had always disliked the extended posture ; ex- 
cept for the night’s rest, she used to say ; imagining herself 
to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, in her attitude, 
when seated by day : — and often at night the poor woman 
had to sit up for the qualms of her dyspepsia ! — But I ’m 
bound to think humanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, 
he thought, and he fetched the spirit required, to behold her 
face emerge from a pale blue silk veiling ; as it were, the 
inanimate wasted led up from the mould by morning. 

Mr. Buttermore signalled to them to draw near. 

Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for 
sunken eyes was distinguishable as the one once known. If 
the world could see it and hear, that it called itself a man’s 
wife ! She looked burnt out. 

Two chairs had been set to front the sofa. Execution 
there ! Victor thought, and he garrotted the unruly mind of 
a man really feeling devoutness in the presence of the shadow 
thrown by the dread Shade. 

Ten minutes,” Mr. Buttermore said low, after obligingly 
placing them on the chairs. 


410 


owe: of our conquerors 


He went. They were alone with Mrs. Burman. 

No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the 
floating grey of eyes patient to gaze from their vast dis- 
tance. Big drops fell from Nataly’s. Victor heard the 
French time-piece on the mantel-shelf, where a familiar 
gilt Cupid swung for the seconds : his own purchase. The 
time of day on the clock was wrong ; the Cupid swung. 

Nataly’s mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. 
More than a minute of the terrible length of the period of 
torture must have gone : two, if not three. 

A quaver sounded. “ You have come.” The voice was 
articulate, thinner than the telephonic, trans- Atlantic by 
deep-sea cable. 

Victor answered : We have.” 

Another minute must have gone in the silence. And 
when we get to five minutes we are on the descent, rapidly 
counting our way out of the house, into the fresh air, where 
we were half an hour back, among those happy beasts in 
the pleasant Gardens! 

Mrs. Burman’s eyelids shut. said you would come.” 

Victor started to the 6re-screen. Your sight requires 
protection.” 

She dozed. And Natalia Dreighton ! ” she next said. 

They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for 
the slide downward and outward ! ‘Nataly should never 
have been allowed to come. 

The white waistcoat I ” struck his ears. 

“Old customs with me, always ! ” he responded. “The 
first of April, always. White is a favourite. Pale blue, 
too. But I fear — I hope you have not distressing nights ? 
In my family we lay great stress on the nights we pass. 
My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge of 
the condition of health by the nightly record.” 

“ Your daughter was in their house.” 

She knew everything! 

“Very fond of my daughter — the ladies,” he remarked. 

“ I wish her well.” 

“ You are very kind.” 

Mrs. Burman communed within or slept. “ Victor, 
Natalia, we will pray,” she said. 

Her trembling hands crossed their fingers. Nataly 
slipped to her knees. 


AK EXPIATION 


411 


The two women mutely praying, pulled Victor into the 
devotional hush. It acted on him like the silent spell of 
service in a Church. He forgot his estimate of the minutes, 
he formed a prayer, he refused to hear the Cupid swinging, 
he droned a sound of sentences to deaden his ears. Ideas 
of eternity rolled in semblance of enormous clouds. Death 
was a black bird among them. The piano rang to Nataly’s 
young voice and his. The gold and white of the chairs 
welcomed a youth suddenly enrolled among the wealthy by 
an enamoured old lady on his arm. Cupid tick- ticked. — Poor 
soul ! poor woman ! How little we mean to do harm when 
we do an injury ! An incomprehensible world indeed at 
the bottom and at the top. We get on fairly at the centre. 
Yet it is there that we do the mischief making such a 
riddle of the bottom and the top. What is to be said ! 
Prayer quiets one. Victor peered at Nataly fervently on 
her knees and Mrs. Burman bowed over her knotted fingers. 
The earnestness of both enforced an effort at a phrased 
prayer in him. Plungeing through a wave of the scent of 
Marechale, that was a tremendous memory to haul him 
backward and forward, he beheld his prayer dancing across 
the furniture ; a diminutive thin black figure, elvish, ir- 
reverent, appallingly unlike his proper emotion ; and he 
brought his hands just to touch, and got to the edge of his 
chair, with split knees. At once the figure vanished. By 
merely looking at Nataly, he passed into her prayer. A 
look at Mrs. Burman made it personal, his own. He heard 
the cluck of a horrible sob coming from him. After a 
repetition of his short form of prayer deeply stressed, he 
thanked himself with the word sincere,” and a queer side- 
thought on our human susceptibility to the influence of 
posture. We are such creatures. 

Nataly resumed her seat. Mrs. Burman had raised her 
head. She said: ^MVe are at peace.” She presently said, 
with effort : ^Ht cannot last with me. I die in nature’s 
way. I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may have 
it above. I give it here, to you, to all. My soul is cleansed, 
I trust. Much was to say. My strength will not. Unto 
God, you both ! ” 

The Eev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered 
step to the back of the sofa. Nataly dropped before the 


412 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


unseeing, scarce breathing, lady for an instant. Victor 
^ murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared the cere- 
monial shake of hands. He turned away, then turned back, 
praying for power to speak, to say that he had found his 
heart, was grateful, would hold her in memory. He fell on a 
knee before her, and forgot he had done so when he had 
risen. They were conducted by the rev. gentleman to the 
hall-door: he was not speechless. Jarniman uttered some- 
thing. 

That black door closed behind them. 


CHAPTEE XLI 

THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 

To a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had 
voice, London may be restorative as air of Summer Alps. 
It is by contrast blooming life. Observe the fellowship of 
the houses shoulder to shoulder ; and that straight ascend- 
ing smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the good 
policeman yonder, blessedly idle on an orderly Sabbath 
evening ; and the families of the minor people trotting 
homeward from the park to tea ; here and again an amiable 
carriage of the superimposed people driving to pay visits ; 
they are so social, friendly, inviting to him ; they strip him 
of the shroud, sing of the sweet old world. He cannot but 
be moved to the extremity of charitableness neighbouring 
on tears. 

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, 
echo of the fact still shouting in his breast, that he had 
seen Mrs. Burinan, and that the interview was over — tire 
leaf turned and the book shut — held Victor in a silence 
until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by 
the more human burst of gratitude to the dying woman, 
who had spared him, as much as she could, a scene of the 
convulsive pathetic, and had not called on him for any 
utterance of penitence. That worm-like thread of voice 
came up to him still from sexton-depths ; it sounded a larger 


THE ^4IGHT OF THE GEEAT UNDELlVEEED SPEECH 413 

forgiveness without the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, 
as he told JSTataly ; at the same time bidding her smell ^^the 
marvellous oxygen of the park.’^ He declared it to be quite 
equal to Lakelands. 

She slightly pressed his arm for answer. Perhaps she did 
not feel so deepl}^ ? She was free of the horrid associations 
with the scent of Marechale. At any rate, she had com- 
ported herself admirably ! 

Victor fancied he must have shuddered when he passed 
by Jarniman at the door, who was almost now seeing his 
mistress’s ghost — would have the privilege to-morrow. He 
called a cab and drove to Mrs. John Cormyn’s, at Nataly’s 
request, for Nesta and Mademoiselle ; enjoying the London- 
ized odour of the cab. Nataly did not respond to his warm 
and continued eulogies of ]\Irs. Burman ; she rather dis- 
appointed him. He talked of the gold and white furniture, 
he just alluded to the Cupid : reserving his mental comment, 
that the time-piece was all astray, the Cupid regular on the 
swing : — strange, touching, terrible, if really the silly gilt 
figure symbolized! . . . And we are a silly figure to be 
sitting in a cab imagining such things ! — When Nesta and 
mademoiselle were opposite, he had the pleasure to see 
Nataly take Nesta’s hand and hold it until they reached 
home. Those two talking together in the brief words of 
their deep feeling, had tones that were singularly alike : the 
mezzo-soprano filial to the divine maternal contralto. Those 
two dear ones mounted to Nataly’s room. 

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart 
together once more ; each looked the happier for it. Dartrey 
was among their dinner-guests, and Nataly took him to her 
little blue-room before she went to bed. He did not speak 
of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to keep 
her from excitement. My dear fellow, if you had seen her 
with Mrs. Burman ! ” Victor said, and loudly praised her 
coolness. She was never below a situation, he affirmed. 

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She 
began panting at a word about Mr. Barmby’s ready services. 
When, however, she related the state of affairs between 
Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each of them to her, 
he said, embracing her : Your wisdom shall guide us, my 
love,” and almost extinguished a vexation by concealing it. 


414 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


She sighed : If one could think that a girl with Kesta’s 
revolutionary ideas of the duties of women, and their powers, 
would be safe — or at all rightly guided by a man who is 
both one of the noblest and the wildest in the ideas he 
entertains ! 

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to daz- 
zle the gossips, crack on the sky in a futile rocket-bouquet. 

She was distressed ; she moaned : My girl ! my girl ! I 
should wish to leave her with one who is more fixed — the 
old-fashioned husband. Hew ideas must come in politics, 
but in Society ! — and for women ! And the young having 
heads, are the most endangered. Hesta vows her life to it ! 
Hartrey supports her ! 

^‘See Colney,’’ said Victor. ‘^Odd, Colney does you 
good; some queer way he has. Though you don’t care 
for his Hival Tongues, — and the last number was funny, 
with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing a 
farewell to his cricket-bat, before he whirls it away to 
Neptune — and the blue hand of his nation’s protecting 
God observed to seize it ! — Dead failure with the public, 
of course ! However, he seems to seem wise with you. 
The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics 
monthly. See Colney to-morrow, my love. Now go to 
sleep. We have got over the worst. I speak at my 
Meeting to-morrow and am a champagne-bottle of notes 
and points for them.” 

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought 
so, when awaking to the conception of a people solidified, 
rich and poor, by the common pride of simple manhood. 
But it was not coloured, not a luminous globe: and the 
people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to 
meet the Puture. It looked like a paragraph in a news- 
paper, upon which a Leading Article sits, dutifully arous- 
ing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under the ribs of 
cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. 
He would not have it laughed at; still he could not admit 
it as more than a skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let 
none think him a mere City merchant, millionnaire, 
boonfellow, or music-loving man of the world. He had 
ideas to shoot across future Ages; — provide against the 
shrinkage of our Coal-beds ; against, and for, if you like, 


THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 415 

the thickening, jumbling, threatening excess of population 
in these Islands, in Europe, America, all over our habitable 
sphere. Now that Mrs. Burman, on her way to bliss, was 
no longer the dungeon-cell for the man he would show 
himself to be, this name for successes, corporate nucleus of 
the enjoyments, this Victor Montgomery Radnor, intended 
impressing himself upon the world as a factory of ideas. 
Colney’s insolent charge, that the English have no imagi- 
nation — a doomed race, if it be true! — would be con- 
futed. For our English require but the lighted leadership 
to come into cohesion, and step ranked, and chant har- 
moniously the song of their benevolent aim. And that 
astral head giving, as a commencement, example of the 
right use of riches, the nation is one, part of the riddle of 
the future solved. 

Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, 
that his bath-water heated. Only the vision was wanted. 
On London Bridge he had seen it — a great thing done to 
the flash of brilliant results. That was after a fall. 

There had been a fall also of the scheme of Lakelands. 

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications 
and significations in the fall ! — But there had certainly 
been a moral fall, fully to the level of the physical, in the 
maintaining of that scheme of Lakelands, now ruined by 
his incomprehensible Nesta — who had saved him from 
falling further. His bath-water chilled. He jumped 
out and rubbed furiously with his towels and flesh-brushes, 
chasing the Idea for simple warmth, to have Something 
inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with the cry: 
But no one can say I do not love my Nataly ! And he 
tested it to prove it by his readiness to die for her : which 
is heroically easier than the devotedly living, and has a 
weight of evidence in our internal Courts for surpassing 
the latter tedious performance. 

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for 
the making of money, the whole year of an erected Lake- 
lands, notwithstanding uninterrupted successes, was a 
blank. Or rather we have to wish it were a blank. The 
scheme departs : payment for the enlisted servants of it is 
in prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet 
pointing to proofs of service, refuses payment in ordinary 


416 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


coin; and we tell him we owe him nothing, that he is not 
a man of the world, has no understanding of Nature: and 
still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door we 
are astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How 
is it ? Would other men be so sensitive to him ? Victor 
was appeased by the assurance of his possession of an 
exceptionally scrupulous conscience; and he settled the 
debate by thinking: “After all, for a man like me, battling 
incessantly, a kind of Vesuvius, I must have — can’t be 
starved, must be fed — though, pah ! But I ’m not to be 
questioned like other men. — But how about an aristocracy 
of the contempt of distinctions ? — But there is no escaping 
distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence. — And 
indulges ? — Say, an exceptional nature ! — Supposing a 
certain beloved woman to pronounce on the case ? — She 
cannot: no woman can be a just judge of it.” — He cried: 
“ My love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy 
to right her to-day, to-morrow, the very instant the clock 
strikes the hour of my release ! ” 

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor 
entered into it, condemned to swing, and be a thrall. His 
intensity of sensation launched him on an eternity of the 
swinging in ridiculous nakedness to the measure of Time 
gone crazy. He had to correct a repFoof of Mrs. Burman, 
as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down to breakfast, 
hopeing he might hear of that clock stopped and that 
sickening motion with it. 

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly 
inviting to her villa over Como, acted on him at breakfast 
like the waving of a banner. “We go,” Victor said to 
Nataly, and fiattered-up a smile about her lips — too much 
a resurrection smile. There was talk of the Meeting at 
the theatre: Simeon Benellan had spoken there in the 
cause of the deceased Member, was known, and was likely 
to have a good reception. Fun and enthusiasm might be 
expected. 

“ And my darling will hear her husband speak to-night,” 
he whispered as he was departing; and did a mischef, he 
had to fear, for a shadowy knot crossed Nataly’s forehead, 
she seemed paler. He sent back Nesta and mademoiselle, 
in consequence, at the end of the Green Park. 


THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 417 


Their dinner-hour was early; Simeon Fenellan, Colney 
Durance, and Mr. Peridon — pleasing to Nataly for his 
faithful siege of the French fortress — were the only 
guests. When they rose, Nataly drew Victor aside. He 
came dismayed to Nesta. She ran to her mother. ^^Not 
hear papa speak ? Oh, mother, mother ! Then I stay 
with her. But can^t she come ? He is going to unfold 
ideas to us. There ! 

“My naughty girl is not to poke her fun at orators,’’ 
Nataly said. “No, dearest; it would agitate me to go. 
I ’m better here. I shall be at peace when the night is 
over.” 

“But you will be all alone here, dear mother.” 

Nataly’s eyes wandered to fall on Colney. He proposed 
to give her his company. She declined it. Nesta ven- 
tured another entreaty, either that she might be allowed to 
stay or have her mother with her at the Meeting. 

“ My love,” Nataly said, “ the thought of the Meeting — ” 
She clasped at her breast; and she murmured: “I shall be 
comforted by your being with him. There is no danger 
there. But I shall be happy, I shall be at peace when 
this night is over.” 

Colney persuaded her to have him for companion. Mr. 
Peridon, who was to have driven with Nesta and made- 
moiselle, won admiration by proposing to stay for an hour 
and play some of Mrs. Radnor’s favourite pieces. Nesta 
and Victor overbore Nataly’s objections to the lover’s gen- 
erosity. So Mr. Peridon was left. Nesta came hurrying 
back from the step of the carriage to kiss her mother again, 
saying: “Just one last kiss, my own ! And she ’s not to 
look troubled. I shall remember everything to tell my 
own mother. It will soon be over.” 

Her mother nodded; but the embrace was passionate. 

Nesta called her father into the passage, bidding him 
prohibit any delivery to her mother of news at the door. 
“ She is easily startled now by trifles — you have noticed ?” 

Victor summoned his recollections and assured her he 
had noticed, as he believed he had. “ The dear heart of 
her is fretting for the night to be over ! And think ! — 
seven days, and she is in Lakelands. A fortnight, and 
we have our first Concert. Durandarte ! Oh, the dear 

27 


418 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


heart ’ll be at peace when I tell her of a triumphant Meet- 
ing. Not a doubt of that, even though Colney turns the 
shadow of his back on us.” 

One critic the less for you ! ” said Nesta. Skepsey was 
to meet her carriage at the theatre. 

Ten minutes later, Victor and Simeon Fenellan were 
proceeding thitherward on foot. 

have my speech,” said Victor. “You prepare the 
way for me, following our influential friend Dubbleson; 
Cole wort winds up; anyone else they shout for. We shall 
have a great evening. I suspect I shall find Themison or 
Jarniman when I get home. You don’t believe in intima- 
tions ? I ’ve had crapy processions all day before my eyes. 
No wonder, after yesterday ! ” 

“Dubbleson must n’t drawl it out too long,” said 
Fenellan. 

“ We ’ll drop a hint. Where ’s Dartrey ? ” 

“He’ll come. He’s in one of his black moods: not 
temper. He ’s got a notion he killed his wife by dragging 
her to Africa with him. She was not only ready to go, 
she was glad to go. She had a bit of the heroine in her 
and a certainty of tripping to the deuce if she was left to 
herself.” 

“Tell Nataly that,” said Victor. “And tell her about 
Dartrey. Harp on it. Once she was all for him and our 
girl. But it ’s a woman — though the dearest ! I defy 
anyone to hit on the cause of their changes. We must 
make the best of things, if we ’re for swimming. The task 
for me to-night will be, to keep from rolling out all I ’ve 
got in my head. And I ’m not revolutionary, I ’m for sta- 
bility. Only I do see that the firm stepping-place asks 
for a long stride to be taken. One can’t get the English 
to take a stride — unless it ’s for a foot behind them : — 
bother old Colney ! Too timid, or too scrupulous, down we 
go into the mire. There! — But I want to say it! I want 
to save the existing order. I want Christianity, instead 
of the Mammonism we ’re threatened with. Great fortunes 
now are becoming the giants of old to stalk the land ; or 
mediaeval Barons. Dispersion of wealth, is the secret. 
Nataly ’s of that mind with me. A decent poverty ! She ’s 
rather wearying, wants a change. I ’ve a steam-yacht in 


THE ISIIGHT OF THE GKEAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 419 


my eye, for next month on the Mediterranean. All our 
set. She likes quiet. I believe in my political recipe 
for it.^^ 

He thumped on a method he had for preserving aris- 
tocracy — true aristocracy^ amid a positively democratic 
flood of riches. 

“ It appears to me, you ^re on the road of Priscilla 
Graves and Pempton/’ observed Simeon. “Strike off 
Priscilla’s viands and friend Pempton’s couple of, glasses, 
and there ’s your aristocracy established; but with rather 
a dispersed recognition of itself.” 

“Upon my word, you talk like old Colney, except for a 
twang of your own,” said Victor. “Colney sours at every 
fresh number of that Serial. The last, with Delphica de- 
tecting the plot of Palarique, is really not so bad. The 
four disguised members of the Comedie Frangaise on board 
the vessel from San Francisco, to declaim and prove the 
superior merits of the Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo 
the cleverness. And Bobinikine turning to the complexion 
of the remainder of cupboard dumpling discovered in an 
emigrant’s house-to-let! And Semhians — I forget what: 
and Mytharete's forefinger over the bridge of his nose, like 
a pensive vulture on the skull of a desert camel I But, I 
complain , there ’s nothing to make the English love the 
author; and it ’s wasted, he ’s basted, and the book ’ll have 
no sale. I hate satire.” 

“Bough soap for a thin skin, Victor. Does it hurt our 
people much ? ” 

“ Not a bit ; does n’t touch them. But I want my friends 
to succeed I ” 

Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the 
theme. Victor wished the Houses of Parliament to catch 
the beams of sunset. He deferred to the suggestion that 
the Hospital’s doing so seemed appropriate. 

“ I ’m always pleased to find a decent reason for what 
i5,” he said. Then he queried: “But what is, if we look 
at it, and while we look, Simeon ? She may be going — or 
she ’s gone already, poor woman 1 I shall have that scene 
of yesterday everlastingly before my eyes, like a drop- 
curtain. Only, you know, Simeon, they don’t feel the 
end, as we in health imagine. Colney would say, we 


420 


OISTE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


have the spasms and they the peace. I ’ve a mind to send 
up to Regent’s Park with inquiries. It would look re- 
spectful. God forgive me! — the poor woman perverts me 
at every turn. Though I will say, a certain horror of 
death I had — she whisked me out of it yesterday. I don’t 
feel it any longer. What are you jerking at ? ” 

‘‘Only to remark that if the thing’s done for us, we 
haven’t it so much on our sensations.” 

“Mor^, if we’re sympathetic. But that compels us to 
be philosophic — or who could live! Poor woman! ” 

“ Waft her gently, Victor! ” 

“Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I 
tell you, Simeon, what I can’t mention to-night: I mean 
to enliven these poor dear people on their forsaken South 
of the City. I ’ve my scheme. Elected or not, I shall 
hardly be accused of bribery when I put down my first 
instalment.” 

Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for 
the speech he was to deliver. He could not but reflect 
on the genial man’s willingness and capacity to do deeds 
of benevolence, constantly thwarted by the position into 
which he had plunged himself. 

They were received at the verge of the crowd outside the 
theatre-doors by Skepsey, who wriggled, tore and clove 
a way for them, where all were obedient, but the numbers 
lumped and clogged. When finally they reached the stage, 
they spied at Nesta’s box, during the thunder of the 
rounds of applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubble- 
son, Sir Abraham Quatley, Dudley Sowerby,and others; 
and with Beaves Urmsing — a politician “never of the 
opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow ! — go any- 
where to hear him,” he vowed. 

“Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite 
safely,” said Dudley, feasting on the box which contained 
them and no Dartrey Fenellan in it. 

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey ’s absence. Not before 
Mr. Dubbleson, the chairman, the “gentleman of local 
influence,” had animated the drowsed wits and respiratory 
organs of a packed audience by yielding place to Simeon, 
did Dartrey appear. Simeon’s name was shouted, in proof 
of the happy explosion of his first anecdote, as Dartrey 


^HE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 421 

took seat behind Nesta. “Half an hour with the dear 
mother,’’ he said. 

ISTesta’s eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a 
demure young woman sitting close behind Louise de 
Seilles. “You know Matilda Pridden.” 

Dartrey held his hand out. “ Has she forgiven me ? ” 

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an 
outline of the no need for it, with perfect good breeding. 
Dartrey was moved to think Skepsey’s choice of a woman 
to worship did him honour. He glanced at Louise. Her 
manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly with 
ISTesta. He said : “ I left Mr. Peridon playing. — A little 
anxiety to hear that the great speech of the evening is 
done; it’s nothing else. I’ll run to her as soon as it’s 
over.” 

“Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!” She 
turned to Louise, who smiled at the simple art of the 
exclamation, assenting. 

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the wav- 
ing of a hand to them and his delight at Simeon’s ringing 
points: which were, to Dartrey ’s mind, vacuously clever 
and crafty. Dartrey despised effects of oratory, save when 
soldiers had to be hurled on a mark — ■ or citizens nerved to 
stand for their country. 

Nesta dived into her father’s brilliancy of appreciation, 
a trifle pained by Dartrey’s aristocratic air when he sur- 
veyed the herd of heads agape and another cheer rang 
round. He smiled with her, to be with her, at a hit here 
and there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner 
of winning electors to consider the country’s interests and 
their own. One fellow in the crowded pit, affecting a 
familiarity with Simeon, that permitted the taking of 
liberties with the orator’s Christian name, mildly amused 
him. He had no objection to hear “ Simmy ” shouted, as 
Louise de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in re- 
gard to the rough machinery of Freedom. 

Skepsey entered the box. 

“We shall soon be serious. Miss Hesta,” he said, after 
a look at Matilda Pridden. 

There was prolonged roaring — on the cheerful side. 

“ And another word about security that your candidate 


422 


ONE OF OITR CONQUEROBS 


will keep his promises/’ continued Simeon: ^‘You have 
his word, my friends ! ” And he told the story of the old 
Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned the 
usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his 
Hidalgo hand on a cataract of Kronos-beard across his 
breast, and pulled forth three white hairs,- and presented 
them: “And as honourably to the usurious Jews as to the 
noble gentleman himself, that security was accepted!” 

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator 
fell upon the question of political specifics: — Mr. Victor 
Eadnor trusted to English good sense too profoundly to be 
offering them positive cures, as they would hear the enemy 
say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered, if we ’re 
not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of the science of 
specifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably 
Spanish, who had no practice, and wished for leisure to 
let him prosecute his anatomical and other investigations 
to discover his grand medical nostrum. So to get him 
fees meanwhile he advertised a cure for dyspepsia — the 
resource of starving doctors. And sure enough his 
patient came, showing the grand fat fellow we may be 
when we carr}^ more of the deciduously mortal than of the 
scraggy vital upon our persons. Anyone at a glance would 
have prescribed water-cresses to him : water-cresses exclu- 
sive!}^ to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician 
did. Away went his patient, returning at the end of the 
fortnight, lean, and with the appetite of a Toledo blade for 
succulent slices. He vowed he was the man. Our esti- 
mable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his tender 
parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and 
had eaten nothing whatever but unadulterated water- 
cresses in the interval, seized on him in an ecstasy by the 
collar of his coat, pushed him into the surgery, knocked 
him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the felicity 
of exposing to view the very healthiest patient ever seen 
under dissecting hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery 
of the specific for him. All to further science ! — to which, 
in spite of the petitions of all the scientific bodies of the 
civilized world, he fell a martyr on the scaffold, poor gen- 
tleman! But we know politics to be no such empirical 
science. 


THE NIGHT OF THE GKEAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH 423 

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought 
it home to Beaves Urmsing, whose laugh drove any tone 
of apology out of it. Yet the orator was asked; “Do you 
take politics for a joke, Simmy ? ’’ 

He countered his questioner : “ Just to liberate you from 
your moribund state, my friend.’^ And he told the story 
of the wrecked sailor, found lying on the sands, flung up 
from the foundered ship of a Salvation captain; and how 
that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit for in- 
terment; until presently a something of a voice grew 
down into his ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom 
he had tied to a board to give her a last chance in the 
surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her feathers, and 
shouting: Tolly tho draw, dry ! — which struck on the 

nob of Jack’s memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of 
the cabin under Salvationism, and he began heaving, and 
at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to 
sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and cried: 
“ That did it ! ISTow to business ! ” for he was hungry. 
“And when I catch the ring of this world’s laugh from 
you, my friend ! . . Simeon’s application of the story 
was drowned. 

After the outburst, they heard his friend again inter- 
ruptingly; “You keep that tongue of yours from wagging, 
as it did when you got round the old widow woman for her 
money, Simmy ! ” 

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed : 
“And you keep that tongue of yours from committing 
incest on a lie ! ” 

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man 
went under. Simeon flowed. Conscience reproached him 
with the little he had done for Victor, and he had now his 
congenial opportunity. 

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so 
cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were 
barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy 
occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid, as 
with the checked impatience for a leap. Hesta looked at 
Louise when some one was perceived on the stage bending 
to her father. It was Mr. Peridon ; he never once raised 
his face. Apparently he was not intelligible or audible ; 


424 


ONE OF OUE. CONQUEKORS 


but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey 
quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried 
words to right and left. He passed from sight, Mr. 
Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not return. 

Nesta felt her father’s absence as light gone; his eyes 
rayed light. Besides she had the anticipation of a speech 
from him, that would win Matilda Pridden. She fancied 
Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell of the 
hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in 
his ear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. 
Matilda Pridden’s gaze on him and the people was painful 
to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set herself to study 
a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of 
better leadership, she believed. Her father had been tell- 
ing her of late of a faith he had in the English, that they 
(or so her intelligence translated his remarks) ^had power 
to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be once more the 
Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring mate- 
rialism : — some such idea; very quickening to her, as it 
would be to this earnest young woman worshipped by 
S^kepsey. Her father’s absence and the continued shouts 
of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened her in 
her desire to have the soul of the good working sister 
refreshed. They had talked together; not much: enough 
for each to see at either’s breast the wells from the founts 
of life. . 

The' box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her 
hand. She stood-up to his look. He said to Matilda 
Pridden: Come with us; she will need you.” 

Speak it,” said Nesta. 

He said to the other: ‘SShe has courage.” 

could trust to her,” Matilda Pridden replied. 

fiesta read his eyes. ‘^Mother?” 

His answer was in the pressure. 

ajii?” 

‘‘ISTo longer.” 

^^Oh! Dartrey.” 

Matilda Pridden caught her fast. 

‘‘I can walk, dear,” Kesta said. 

Dartrey mentioned her father. 

She understood: am thinking of him,” 


THE LAST 


425 


The words of her mother: At peace when the night is 
over,” rang. Along the gassy passages of the back of the 
theatre, the sound coming from an applausive audience 
was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It was 
as void of human meaning as a sea. 


CHAPTER XLII 

THE LAST 

In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. 
Septimus Barmby was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a 
scribbled message from Victor, which he deciphered by 
candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short 
inquiries and communications, losing more and more the 
sense of it as his intelligence became aware of what dread 
blow had befallen the stricken man. He was bidden come 
to fulfil his promise instantly. He remembered the bear- 
ing of the promise. Mr. Peridon’s hurried explanatory 
narrative made the request terrific, out of tragically 
lamentable. A semblance of obedience had to be put on, 
and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmby prayed at 
heart for guidance further. 

The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; 
they had the dry sob in the throat. 

“ Miss Radnor ? ” Mr. Barmby asked. 

‘‘She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break 
down.” 

“I can conceive her to possess high courage.” 

“She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.” 

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep 
regrets moved him to say: “A loss irreparable. We have 
but one voice of sorrow. And how sudden ! The dear lady 
had no suffering, I trust.” 

“ She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in 
his arms. She was unconscious, he says. I left her 
straining for breath. She said ‘ Victor; ’ she tried to 
smile : — I understood I was not to alarm him.” 


426 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


And he too late ! ” 

‘‘He was too late, by some minutes.'’ 

“ At least I may comfort. Miss Eadnoi* must be a bless- 
ing to him.” 

“They cannot meet. Her presence excites him.” 

That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on 
from darker chambers to the deadly dark. The immo- 
rality in the moral situation could not be forgotten by one 
who was professionally a moralist. But an incorruptible 
beauty in the woman’s character claimed to plead for her 
memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws 
are softened by a sinner’s death to hear excuses, and may 
own a relationship, haply perceive the faint nimbus of the 
saint. Heath among us proves us to be still not so far 
from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind: 
Earth makes all sweet. 

Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the 
carol of Optimists! Yet it is not the black view which is 
the right view. There is one between: the path adopted 
by Septimus Barmby : — if he could but induce his brethren 
to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances 
might help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under 
his direction . . . having her hand disengaged. — Mr. 
Barmby startled himself in the dream of his uninterred 
passion for the maiden : he chased it, seized it, hurled it 
hence, as a present sacrilege : — constantly, and at the 
pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by 
the tempter! Is it that the love of woman is our weak- 
ness ? For if so, then would a celibate clergy have grant 
of immunity, But, alas, it is not so with them! We 
have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again 
we are pushed to contemplate woman as the mysterious 
obstruction to the perfect purity of soul. Nor is there a 
refuge in asceticism. No more devilish nourisher of pride 
do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And 
strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to 
thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance 
revolving upon ourself, our vile self! Mr. Barmby 
clutched it by the neck. 

Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the 
street, assisted him to forget himself at the sight of the 


THE LAST 


427 


inanimate houses of this London, all revealed in a quietness 
not less immobile than tombstones of an unending ceme- 
tery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it ! — 
The habitual necessity to amass matter for the weekly ser- 
mon, set him noting his meditative exclamations, the noble 
army of platitudes under haloes, of good use to men : justi- 
fiably turned over in his mind for their good. He had to 
think that this act of the justifying of the act reproached 
him with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with ago- 
nized friends truly dear. Drawing near the hospitable 
house, his official and a cordial emotion united, as we see 
sorrowful crape -wreathed countenances. His heart struck 
heavily when the house was visible. 

Could it be the very house ? The look of it belied 
the tale inside. But that threw a ghostliness on the 
look. 

Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted 
Dudley Sowerby. His ability to speak was tasked. They 
gathered, that mademoiselle and “a Miss Pridden’’ were 
sitting with Hesta, and that their service in a crisis had 
been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, 
woman has indeed her place: when life’s battle waxes red. 
Her soul must be capable of mounting to the level of the 
man’s, then ? It is a lesson! 

Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come 
forth. He could not tear himself from sight of the house. 

The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney 
Durance and Simeon Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed 
a face with stains of the lashing of tears. • 

Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. “Her father 
must not see her. For him, it may have to be a specialist. 
We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey Fenellan stays beside 
him : — good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a form of 
it might soothe: — ^any soothing possible I No music. I 
will return in a few hours.” 

He went on foot. 

Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon 
concerning the message he had received — the ceremony 
requiring his official presidency. Neither of them replied. 
They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn 
sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park, 


428 


OKE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


A man came along the pavement, working slow legs 
hurriedly. Simeon ran down to him. 

“Humour, as much as you can,” Colney said to Mr. 
Barmby. “Let him imagine.” 

“ Miss Eadnor ? ” 

“Not to speak of her ! ” 

“ The daughter he so loves ? ” 

Mr. Barmby’s tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. 
Were they inducing him to mollify a madman ? But was 
it possible to associate the idea of madness with Mr. 
Eadnor ? 

Simeon ran back. “Jarniman,” he remarked. “It^s 
over ! ” 

“Now!” Colney^s shoulders expressed the comment. 
“Well, now, Mr. Barmby, you can do the part desired. 
Come in. It ’s morning 1 ” He stared at the sky. 

All except Dudley passed in. 

Mr. Barmby wanted more'advice, his dilemma being acute. 
It was moderated, though not more than moderated, when 
he was informed of the death of Mrs. Burman Eadnor; an 
event that occurred, according to Jarniman 's report, forty- 
five minutes after Skepsey had a second time called for 
information of it at the house in Eegent’s Park : five hours 
and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death 
of Nataly. He was urged by some spur of senseless irony 
to verify the calculation and correct it in the minutes. 

Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior 
was on any of the windows of the house either to deepen 
awe or relieve. They were blank as eyeballs of the 
mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but 
Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating 
whether indeed a stricken man, who has become the cause 
of woeful trouble, may not be pointing a moral. Pacing 
on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey drive 
up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Eadnor’s lawyer. 
Could it be that there was no Will written ? Could a 
Will be executed now ? The moral was more forcibly 
suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Eadnor success- 
ful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest 
of the elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an 
hour, he and all his house ! And if at once to pass beneath 


THE LAST 


429 


the ground, the blow would have seemed merciful for him. 
Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the rational and 
the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly 
distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, 
was an anguish : — A notion came into the poor man, that 
he was the dead one of the two, and he cried out : “ Cre- 
mation ? No, Colney ’s right, it robs us of our last laugh. 
I lie as I fall.’’ He ^^had a confession for his Nataly, for 
her only, for no one else.” He had ^‘an Idea.” His 
begging of Dudley to listen without any punctilio (putting 
a vulgar oath before it), was the sole piece of unreason- 
ableness in the explanation of the idea : and that was not 
much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports 
of Radical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too 
young to be “best man to a widower about to be married,” 
and that Barmby was “coming all haste to do the business, 
because of no time to spare.” 

Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey 
Fenellan his task of watching over the wreck of a splendid 
intelligence, humouring and restraining. According to 
the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the symptoms 
before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he 
hung, and then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a 
cry for her father. He rose; Dartrey was by. Hugged 
fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature raved of his 
being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in the 
house. 

There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth. 

Nataly’s dead body was her advocate with her family, 
with friends, with the world. Victor had more need of a 
covering shroud to keep calamity respected. Earth makes 
all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted us, do 
well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered 
to the bosom of earth. 

That night’s infinite sadness was concentrated upon 
Nesta. She had need of her strength of mind and body. 

The night went past as a year. The year followed it as 
a refreshing night. Slowly lifting her from our abysses, 
it was a good angel to the girl. Permission could not be 
given for her to see her father. She had a home in the 
modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders of 


430 


ONE OF OUK CONQUEKOKS 


Dauphine; and with French hearts at their best in win- 
ningness around her. she learned again, as an ai‘t, the 
natural act of breathing calmly; she had by degrees a long- 
ing for the snow-heights. When her imagination could 
perch on them with love and pride, she began to recover 
the throb for a part in human action. It set her nature 
flowing to the mate she had chosen, who was her coun- 
sellor, her supporter, and her sword. She had awakened 
to new life, not to sink back upon a breast of love , though 
thoughts of the lover were as blows upon strung musical 
chords at her bosom. Her union with Dartrey was for 
the having an ally and the being an ally, in resolute vision 
of strife ahead, through the veiled dreams that bear the 
blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. ' Are 
not young women hypocrites ? Who shall fathom their 
guile! A girl with a pretty smile, a gentle manner, a 
liking for wild flowers upon the rocks; and graceful with 
resemblances to the swelling proportions of garden -fruits 
approved in young women by the connoisseur eye of man ; 
distinctly designed to embrace the state of marriage, that 
she might (a girl of singularly lucid and receptive eyes) the 
better give battle to men touching matters which they 
howl at an eccentric matron for naming. So it was. 
And the yielding of her hand to Dartrey would have 
appeared at that period of her revival, as among the 
baser compliances of the fleshly, if she had not seen 
in him, whom she owned for leader, her fellow soldier, 
warrior friend, hero, of her own heart’s mould, but a 
greater. 

She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia 
Sanfredini, when Dudley’s letter reached her, with the 
supplicating offer of the share of his earldom. An English 
home meanwhile was proposed to her at the house of his 
mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to 
a brilliant heiress. The generosity she had always felt 
that he possessed, he thus proved in figures. They are con- 
vincing and not melting. But she was moved to tears by 
his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by the hopeful 
news he sent. He wrote delicately, withholding the title 
of her father’s place of abode. There were expectations of 
her father’s perfect recovery; the signs were auspicious; 


THE LAST 


431 


he appeared to be restored to the likeness to himself ’’ in 
the instances Dudley furnished : — his appointment with 
him for the flute-duet next day; and particularly his enthu- 
siastic satisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent 
service of the residence “in which he so happily found 
himself established.” He held it to be, “on the whole, 
superior to Lakelands.” The smile and the tear rolled 
together in ISTesta reading these words. And her father 
spoke repeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of the 
joy her last letter had given him, of his intention to send 
an immediate answer: and he showed Dudley a pile of 
manuscript ready for the post. He talked of public 
affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccen- 
tricity in the views he took; notably when he alluded to 
his envy of little Skepsey. He said he really did envy; 
and his daughter believed it and saw fair prospects in it. 

Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that 
was perforce ungentle, in the signature of the name of 
Hesta Victoria Fenellan: — a name he was to hear cited 
among the cushioned conservatives, and plead for as he 
best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and com- 
pelled esteem, and regrets. 

The day following the report of her father’s wish to see 
her, she and her husband started for England. On that 
day, Victor breathed his last. Dudley had seen the not 
hopeful but an ominous illumination of the stricken man ; 
for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often 
did Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the 
beloved mother with her hand at her mortal wound in 
secret through long years of the wearing of the mask to 
keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge of 
things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes 
hard for her to be tolerant of a world whose tolerance of 
the infinitely evil stamped blotches on its face and shrieked 
in stains across the skin beneath its gallant garb. That 
was only when she thought of it as the world condemning 
her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return 
for corrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent 
young woman’s fanatical overflow of the sisterly senti- 
ments; scholarly friends, too, for such restrainings from 
excess as the mind obtains in a lamp of History exhibiting 


432 


ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 


man’s original sprouts to growth and fitful continuation 
of them. Her first experience of the grief that is in 
pleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when 
the old Concert-set assembled round her. When she heard 
from the mouth of a living woman, that she had saved her 
from going under the world’s waggon-wheels, and taught 
her to know what is actually meant by the good living of 
a shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness 
richer than her recollection of the bride’s, though never 
was bride in fuller flower to her lord than she who brought 
the dower of an equal valiancy to Dartrey Fenellan. You 
are aware of the reasons, the many, why a courageous 
young woman requires of high heaven, far more than the 
cominendably timid, a doughty husband. She had him; 
otherwise would that puzzled old world, which beheld her 
step out of the ranks to challenge it, and could not blast 
her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw to maul 
her character, perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur 
of her parentage. Hesta Victoria Fenellan had the hus- 
band who would have the world respectful to any brave 
woman. This one was his wife. 

Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, 
owing to the scientific opinion he can at any moment of the 
day apply for, as to the military defences of the country ; 
instead of our attempting to arrest the enemy by vocifera- 
tions of persistent prayer : — the sole point of difference 
between him and his Matilda; and it might have been 
fatal but that Nesta’s intervention was persuasive. The 
two members of the Army first in the field to enrol and 
give rank according to the merits of either, to both sexes, 
were made one. Colney Durance (practically cynical when 
not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar. 
His published exercises in Satire produce a flush of the 
article in the Reviews of his books. Meat and wine in 
turn fence the Hymen beckoning Priscilla and Mr. Pemp- 
ton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel’s 
division of races keep Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon 
asunder: and in the uniting of them Colney is interested, 
because it would have so pleased the woman of the loyal 
heart no longer beating. He let Victor’s end be his expia- 
tion and did not phrase blame of him. He considered the 


shallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in 
Victor^s history. He was reconciled to it when, looking 
on their child, he discerned that for a cancelling of the 
errors chargeable to them, the father and mother had kept 
faith with Nature. 


THE EOT) 


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